1 LIBRA OONGRE r 

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| UNITED m _MEEICA. 



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' 



THE 



NEW TESTAMENT IDEA 



OF 



HELL. 



BY 



=; m- mf: 



Sr Mr MERRILL, D. D., 

Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 






CINCINNATI; 
HITCHCOCK AND WALDEN, 

NEW YORK: NELSON & PHILLIPS. 

1878. 



G/^t 



>\ 



Copyright by 
HITCHCOCK <& WALDEN, 

1878. 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHING 



TOM 



PREFACE. 



r I ^HIS little book is written for readers of 
-*• the English Scriptures, and not for 
those havinor access to the wide ran^e of 
theological discussions found in the ponderous 
works on Systematic Divinity, which crowd 
the libraries of the learned. It therefore 
avoids, as far as possible, the use of foreign 
words and elaborate criticisms, keeping an 
eye to the needs of ordinary inquirers and 
seeking to lead them to the knowledge of 
the meaning and use of the original terms 
translated Hell in the New Testament. 

Xo pretension is made to having dis- 
covered any meaning in those words, or any 
fact in regard to their origin, history, or use 
not previously known, and not well estab- 
lished in the minds of all who have given 
particular attention to the subject. The 



4 PREFACE. 

reader will find, however, that the Scriptures 
containing them are classified a little differ- 
ently, and that the terms are so applied as to 
bring their specific differences into greater 
prominence and into right relations. This is 
one of the chief features of the work, and if 
this aim is realized the result will be accepted 
as a sufficient reason for its publication. It 
will enable the reader of moderate culture to 
study the subject in f elligently, knowing in 
every instance whether the passage in hand 
relates to Hades, Tartarus, or Gehenna, an 
advantage not to be lightly esteemed. 

Some will be disappointed in finding so 
little said directly upon those knotty ques- 
tions which arise in connection with the sub- 
ject of future punishment, and it may not be 
satisfactory to be told that such discussions 
have been purposely omitted, in order to 
keep attention to those points which relate 
to the fact itself, and which are necessarily 
preliminary to the consideration of the nature 
and duration of punishment, and of the 



PREFACE. 5 

methods adopted for the vindication of the 
divine proceeding which inflicts the penalty 
of eternal death upon the impenitent. But 
the course pursued accords with the writer's 
best judgment, and will be appreciated when 
the scope and design of the volume are taken 
into the account. One fault with many 
writers on this subject is, that they too readily 
plunge into the mysteries which baffle the 
keenest intellect and the stoutest heart. 

The first thing necessary is to clear the 
subject of embarrassments, by ascertaining as 
nearly as possible what the Scriptures teach. 
In many instances this will remove the most 
serious difficulties from the mind, for the 
reason that those difficulties arise from mis- 
conceptions of the truth, or from wrong im- 
pressions in regard to it. The next thing of 
importance is to study carefully what is pro- 
posed for our acceptance in lieu of that which 
we find in the Scriptures. Just here many 
miss their footing. They listen to broad 
assertions, and reject unpalatable truth be- 



6 PREFACE. 

cause it is unpalatable, without looking 
whither they are drifting or where they are 
to land. Human life is a fact, sin is a fact, 
the approach of death is a fact, and entrance 
into the unseen world is a fact. The Scrip- 
tures tell us what is there to be expected. 
Men object. They quibble ; but they do not 
change the facts, nor bring us clearer light, 
or point us to firmer ground. 

In this little book Hades is treated as a 
fact. The word itself is of little consequence. 
The fact exists. It is a world unseen, but 
real, and it would have existed and filled its 
office, if the name had been different, or if no 
name had ever been given to it. The Miss- 
issippi River poured its waters along the same 
channel for ages before the word Mississippi 
was known, and it would have continued as 
deep and wide if no name had been applied 
to it. So with the invisible world. It does 
not depend on its name for existence or 
character. In the course of human events, 
and perchance of human follies, it so hap- 



PREFACE. 7 

pened that the word Hades was used among 
men as the name of the unknown regions 
inhabited by departed souls ; and the Savior 
adopted it as suitable to his purpose, because 
it would be understood, and in using it he 
sanctioned the general idea of a world of 
spirits, without sanctioning the fanciful no- 
tions prevailing in regard to its location, or 
the pursuits of its inhabitants, because these 
ideas were neither contained in the name nor 
conveyed by its use. The origin of the 
word, and its use prior to its application to 
the nether world, is of no significance, ex- 
cept as showing how it took the meaning it 
bore in the days of Christ, and how it be- 
came suitable for his purpose. 

The same remark is true of Gehenna. The 
name is a mere incident. The eternal state 
of the wicked is a fact — a necessity. Its 
terribleness grows out of the nature of sin, 
and the relation of sin to the divine govern- 
ment. The word Gelienna has nothing to do 
with the nature of sin, and sheds no light on 



8 PREFACE. 

the problem of evil. It only happened, by 
a very natural process, to become so related 
to the punishment of sin, in the mind of the 
Jewish people, that it could be very easily 
carried over into the eternal state, and ap- 
plied metaphorically to the final perdition of 
the ungodly. This was done before Christ 
came, and he adopted the word and used it 
in that sense. The use of the word else- 
where, and before it received this application, 
is of no consequence. The punishment it 
denotes does not depend on the name; nor 
does the name reveal the cause or degree of 
the punishment. We study the name in 
view of its uses, and we gather all our ideas 
of the punishment from the surroundings of 
the word, and its application, knowing that 
all that to which it applies might have ex- 
isted and been revealed under some other 
name, as we claim it does exist, and has 
been made known without reference to this 
name. The name presupposes the thing, 
but does not determine its nature or quali- 



PREFACE. 9 

ties. The use of the word is every thing. 
It is applied to a state of punishment, and 
the incidents of the punishment are so dis- 
tinctly marked as to render it certain that 
the punishment is after death, and yet not 
in the separate state, but in the final state, 
where soul and body share the retribution. 

In most discussions of future punishment, 
the terms which express duration occupy 
large space; but in these pages, those terms 
are not mentioned. They are not forgotten, 
however, nor is any theory advanced that 
ignores or disregards them. They are simply 
not reached. They were not necessary to the 
end in view, if pertinent to the present pur- 
pose, and it was deemed best not to over- 
load the argument under this title, especially 
as another volume is in contemplation, as soon 
as pressing duties will permit its preparation. 

The theories claiming consideration in this 
connection are numerous. That which rep- 
resents all punishment as reformatory, and 
necessarily limited as to duration, leads all 



10 PREFACE. 

the others, and commands the largest share 
of attention. It assumes a post-mortem pro- 
bation, and sets up a new standard of retri- 
bution, unknown to the Scriptures — namely, 
not according to deeds, but according to needs. 
Its fundamental thought is, that men are 
punished just enough to reform them, and 
with that sole object in view. This theory is 
deficient in philosophy and in Scripture war- 
rant. We find no room for probation after 
death, but such facts established, and such 
principles alleged, as preclude the possibility 
of such a thing. 

The soul-sleeping and annihilation theories 
have been encountered only incidentally, and 
refuted so far as the necessity of the argu- 
ment required. They belong more properly 
to the discussion of the nature of punishment. 
The Scriptural idea, however, of the separate 
existence of the soul, has been presented, 
and thereby the crude philosophy of all ma- 
terialistic conceptions of the soul has been 
antagonized. 



PREFACE. II 

The objections usually urged against 
eternal punishment are of two classes — those 
which arise out of false and unscriptural 
views of the subject, and those which are 
merely fault-finding and have no tendency to 
disprove the doctrine. Of the first class are 
those which perplexed Canon Farrar. His 
greatest trouble is with the "accretions," 
and especially the notion of "physical tor- 
tures," and the direct agency of God in tor- 
menting the lost. In the outcome he does 
not deny that sin involves the condition of 
the soul in eternity, and may keep it out of 
heaven forever. The other objections are 
fallacious. They fault the thing itself, and 
stand with equal force whether the doctrine 
be true or false. They are aimed against 
the fact, and not against the proofs of the 

fact. 

Of this class are those which depend on 

a priori reasonings. All arguments of this 

kind are necessarily inconclusive, for the 

reason that we are insufficiently acquainted 



12 PREFACE. 

with the premises to warrant us in affirming 
the conclusion. We can not comprehend 
the nature of God, and to reason from his 
nature is to reason from what we do not 
know. But some of God's attributes are 
revealed. He is just and holy, and we may 
safely reject any doctrine that arrays itself 
against justice and holiness. He is good 
and true, and we may and must reject any 
doctrine opposed to goodness and truth. 
This is all plain enough; but it is quite dif- 
ferent from arguing from the divine nature, 
so imperfectly understood, to any conclusion 
with reference to the rightful method of re- 
vealing the justice and holiness of God, or 
with reference to the degree of punishment 
that is compatible with his goodness. This 
last requires not only the knowledge of the 
fact that God is holy and just and good, 
but the comprehension of the degree and 
power of these perfections, and also the com- 
prehension of the nature and desert of sin 
as a disturbing* element in the moral universe. 



PREFACE. 13 

"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it 
is too high, I can not attain unto it." There- 
fore all reasoning from the nature of God to 
the nature or degree of the punishment 
which he can or can not inflict is reasoning 
from premises which are imperfectly and in- 
adequately understood. 

Some will imagine, no doubt, that too 
much attention has been given to the details 
of opposing opinions and expositions. Pos- 
sibly this is true. Nevertheless, careful ob- 
servation among those troubled by these 
things has convinced me that many pass too 
easily over these details, which appear so 
absurd to themselves, not realizing what in- 
fluence ingenious quibbling has on minds just 
grappling for the first time with these ques- 
tions, and doing it without antecedent train- 
ing in the arts of reasoning, and without the 
knowledge of the rules of interpretation. 
Hundreds of minds are swayed by little 
things which seem unworthy of formal refuta- 
tion. It is therefore well not to regard any 



14 PREFACE. 

thing too small to notice, which we have 
reason to believe appears formidable to other 
minds, and controls their decisions in relation 
to important questions. 

The chapters on topics which do not nec- 
essarily belong to the use of the terms ren- 
dered Hell are added because of their 
connection with the general subject, and as 
illustrative of the thought that the essential 
fact of Hell is revealed independently of the 
use of these words. The theme is the same, 
and the pertinency of these chapters will be 
recognized on perusal of them in connection 
with the whole argument. 

With the hope that this effort to set the 
subject in a clear light before the reader, so 
far as it is treated, will not be useless labor, 
this little volume is sent forth with the prayer 
that the blessing of God may attend it, and 
make it instrumental in leading many seekers 
after truth into safe and Scriptural views of 
the retributions of eternity. S. M. M. 

Chicago, III., July, 1878. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

I. The Terms Employed, 17 

II. Errors Antagonized, 33 

III. Hades— Authorities, 47 

IV. Hades — Scripture Use, 64 

V. The Separate Existence of the Soul, ... 81 

VI. Suffering in Hades, < . 100 

VII. Fixedness of Character in Hades, . . . .131 

VIII. Gehenna — The Issue Stated, 147 

IX. Universalist Expositions, 155 

X. The Jewish Belief, . . 166 

XI. Gehenna — Scripture Use, 181 

XII. Gehenna — Scripture Use Continued, . . . 193 

XIII. Gehenna — Scripture Use Continued, . . . 205 

XIV. The Lake of Fire, 228 

XV. The Second Death, . . . 249 

XVI. The Resurrection of Damnation, 257 

15 



THE 



New Testament Idea of Hell 



Chapter I. 

THE TERMS EMPLOYED. 

THE punishment of sinners is an alterna- 
tive fact. It is God's " strange work," 
the last resort of his wisdom and goodness, 
the final expression of his holiness. It is 
never to be considered as the primary design 
of the law, or of the government which 
makes the law, or of the administrator bear- 
ing the responsibility of maintaining the 
public order for which the law and govern- 
ment exist. In it God takes no delight. 
Yet the necessities of good government, the 
maintenance of order under rightful authority, 
and the highest regard for the welfare of the 
good, require this ultimate vindication of 

2 



1 8 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

righteousness at the expense of the incorrigi- 
bly wicked. 

To the Bible alone do we look for light 
on this subject. There are voices in nature 
and voices in our own souls which speak 
with reference to it; but their utterances are 
indistinct and inharmonious, and without the 
authoritative teachings of the Scriptures these 
other revelations can not be safely inter- 
preted. We therefore come to God's Word 
to learn the facts, so far as they are declared 
to us, and to accept the statements therein 
contained as final, so far as we can under- 
stand and apply them. 

It is not to be expected, however, that 
our curiosity will be gratified. The more 
we learn of God and of his government, and 
of the dispensations of his providence, and 
of the moral relations of his creatures, and 
of the possibilities of destiny, the more deeply 
are we impressed with the incomprehensible- 
ness of his nature, and the unfathomableness 
of his purposes. The light he gives us is 
the "true light/' It is sufficient for our 
probational necessities. As a lamp to our 
feet, it will not misdirect our steps; but it 



THE TERMS EMPLOYED. 19 

does not scatter all the darkness from our 
surroundings, nor make luminous the entire 
pathway of our future being. We know in 
part. We see through a glass darkly. But 
the assurance is given that hereafter the fuller 
light will come, and with it will come the 
higher revelations of the divine glory, and 
the more perfect vindications of the divine 
government. 

The subject of future punishment, in the 
nature of the case, is the hardest to under- 
stand. It grows out of moral conditions 
which are abnormal, and moral relations 
which are distorted. It belongs to the 
darker side of the divine dispensations. In 
every aspect in which we can view it, there 
is necessarily something beyond the ap- 
parent — something deeper and darker — some- 
thing that evades our sight and thought, that 
recedes at our approach, and bids defiance to 
our wishes. We stand before it with awe. 
We look with amazement. A strange mis- 
giving, an indefinable consciousness of timid- 
ity comes over us as we think of the 
insoluble mystery, and yet apprehend the 
dreadful reality of a world of woe. A thou- 



20 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

sand questions arise, and a thousand conjec- 
tures come and go, and yet the darkness is 
not driven away, nor the stubborn fact re- 
moved. It stands out before us in outline, 
commanding our attention, and yet refus- 
ing to disclose its interior form or furnish- 
ment. We study it as a mystery. 

There are several features of this subject 
which have hitherto received much attention, 
and are worthy of it, but which, for lack of 
space in this little treatise, we will not at all 
consider. The nature, duration, and results 
of punishment in the future world will pos- 
sibly afford a theme for another volume, but 
this one must be devoted to matters prelim- 
inary to the discussions which such a work 
would contain; namely, the fact of Hell. 
And by this term is meant a state of punish- 
ment beyond death, which is final, and from 
which there is no deliverance. I shall indulge 
no speculations concerning its location, its 
structure, or dimensions; but shall aim to 
follow the light of the Scriptures concerning 
the fact, and seek so to identify the feet as 
to be able rightly to apply all the passages 
bearing on the subject, each in order. This 



THE TERMS EMPLOYED. 21 

will avoid confusion of thought and of argu- 
ment, a most important point. In a major- 
ity of instances this is not done. Many turn 
aside, unconsciously it may be, from the 
main question of fact, to its modes, its na- 
ture, its conditions, and then the difficulties 
that necessarily belong to these incidents 
are allowed to encumber the primary ques- 
tion, which ought to be settled, first of all, 
upon a sure foundation, supported by the 
testimonies which relate to it, independently 
of human conjectures, wishes, or preposses- 
sions of any sort. 

That there is confusion in the popular 
mind on the subject of Hell is not to be 
questioned. It exists in the Church and out 
of the Church, among the othodox and the 
heterodox, believers and unbelievers. It is 
found among the learned and the unlearned, and 
not one of us dares assume entire freedom 
from its influence. In our earlier thoughts we 
were undoubtedly biased by traditional impres- 
sions, which partook of the current opinions, 
and were shaped by them, without escaping 
the effect of those accretions which the truth 
had gathered to itself in its contact with hu- 



2 2 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

man thoughts and passions. But all the 
crudities of opinion that have found currency 
are not chargeable to these early biases. 
Some are inevitable from the conditions of 
the subject, as found in our standard version 
of the Scriptures. Let us look at this a little. 
There are four words translated Hell in the 
Bible, and not one of them answers to the 
popular idea which has become nearly univer- 
sal where the English Scriptures are read. 
This is a fact known to scholars conversant 
with the original, but scarcely suspected by 
the ordinary reader; and why should it be? 
He has no means of knowing, when he sees 
the word Hell, whether he has before him 
one or the other of these original words, and 
therefore he can not tell whether he is read- 
ing of Hades or Gehenna. The result is in- 
evitable. He confounds things that differ. 
He applies passages indifferently that contain 
these different terms, and that ought not to 
be so applied. 

Nor have those who read the original been 
as careful to classify the Scriptures containing 
these terms as the importance of the matter 
demands. Perhaps the majority of ministers 



THE TERMS EMPLOYED. 23 

a PPb' those passages indiscriminately to the 
same state of being in which the different 
original terms are found. This is a mistake 
which is scarcely excusable. But it would 
not be so bad if the original terms were syn- 
onyms, or had a meaning so nearly alike that 
they could be used interchangeably in the 
language to which the)' belong. Such use 
of them would not then be misleading. 
But they can not be used interchangeably. 
They are not alike in origin, history, use, 
application, or meaning. And yet they are 
translated by the same English word. To 
say the least of it this is unfortunate and 
necessarily misleading. 

The Old Testament word Sheol is used 
with some latitude of meaning and applica- 
tion. It, however, always relates to the state 
of the dead, unless used in a metaphorical 
sense of something in this world; but some- 
times it expresses the state of the body, and 
at other times of the soul. It does not ex- 
press duration. It means in general the un- 
seen world, the state of departed souls. It 
is not the decisive term in this discussion, and 
its use will occupy but little of our attention. 



24 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Tartarus occurs but once in the Scrip- 
tures, and will require but brief consideration. 
It is found in 2 Peter ii, 4: "For if God 
spared not the angels that sinned, but cast 
them down to hell — Tartarus — and delivered 
them into chains of darkness, to be reserved 
unto judgment," etc. It is the prison of the 
fallen angels, this side of the judgment, and 
should have been treated as a proper name — 
that is, it should have been transferred with- 
out translation. Then its meaning, as found 
in classic usage, and in the connection in 
which it is found, would have followed it and 
become familiar to all Biblical students. 

Hades is a more important word. It 
occurs eleven times in the New Testament, 
and is translated "hell" ten times, and 
"grave" once. It is the Greek equivalent 
for the Hebrew Sheol. When a passage 
is quoted in the New Testament from the 
Old, containing Sheol, it is rendered by Hades. 
There is no disagreement among scholars as 
to the meaning of Hades. Some difference 
of application may be found, but, upon the 
whole, there is substantial agreement. This 
fact renders our task comparatively easy, so 



THE TERMS EMPLOYED. 25 

far as this word is concerned. It means the 
unseen world, the place of departed souls, 
and expresses nothing as to their character 
or condition. It always relates to the soul 
in a disembodied state, and never to the 
body; so that it should never be rendered 
grave. There are other Greek words that 
express the receptacle of the dead body, such 
as are rendered grave, tomb, sepulcher, etc.; 
but this word has no such meaning, and 
admits of nothing material. Hence, its true 
and only application is to the state of the 
dead, between death and the resurrection. 
This point is to be emphasized in this treatise. 
Gehenna is the next word. It occurs in 
the New Testament twelve times, and, with 
a single exception, James iii, 6, where it is 
used metaphorically, it occurs in the dis- 
courses of our Lord alone. It related to the 
Jews, primarily, and would only be under- 
stood by them. Here, also, there is sub- 
stantial agreement among scholars. The 
or join and meaning; of the word are not in 
dispute. It is composed of two Hebrew 
words which together mean the valley of 
Hinnom. This was a place in the valley 



26 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

south of Jerusalem, once the seat of idolatrous 
worship, where stood the image of Moloch, 
where the Canaanites, and afterward the Is- 
raelites in their backslidden state, performed 
the cruel rites that distinguished the worship 
of that monstrous idol. King Josiah de- 
stroyed this worship, and polluted the place, 
so that it became the receptacle of the filth 
of the city. In the old Testament it was 
also called Tophet, in allusion to the beating 
of drums that was kept up during the wor- 
ship of Moloch. The name of this place 
became the synonym of all that was opposed 
to God and hateful to his people, and very 
naturally came into use to express the Jewish 
idea of the punishment of the enemies of 
God after death. In this condition of things, 
and in this sense, our Savior used Geheitna, 
with reference to the ultimate punishment of 
the wicked. Its use comes nearer to the 
meaning which the popular sentiment attaches 
to the English word Hell than does any 
other of the terms so translated; and yet it 
is a proper name — the name of a place well- 
known — and should have been transferred, 
and not translated. The discussion of this 



THE TERMS EMPLOYED. 27 

word has reference, not to its origin, history, 
or meaning, but to its application. The 
questions raised are as to whether the Savior 
used it literally or figuratively; and whether 
he designed it to apply to punishment in 
this world, or the next world. 

With those who believe in eternal punish- 
ment the practice is quite common of apply- 
ing this word to the state immediately after 
death; that is, to punishment in Hades; but 
this is evidently improper. It should apply 
only to the final state of the wicked; and 
therefore, never to any state, or place, or 
condition this side of the resurrection of the 
dead. To correct this mistake, and to classify 
the Scriptures containing these different words 
so as to avoid the confusion that has resulted 
from their indiscriminate use, is largely the 
purpose of this volume. Indeed, this is about 
all that is necessary to the vindication of the 
Scriptural doctrine of retribution. 

Here then is the arrangement to be ob- 
served. Sheol is translated by Hades; and 
Hades, being the New Testament word, we 
take it in its truest sense, as applying to the 
invisible world, the state of the dead between 



28 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

death- and the resurrection, and never to any 
thing beyond the resurrection. Tartarus is 
another word for the same thing, with only 
the difference that it is the prison of the 
fallen angels this side of the judgment. It is 
therefore substantially the same as Hades, 
and may be considered as a part of Hades. 
In other words, Hades covers the entire 
ground this side of the resurrection. Gehenna 
applies to nothing till Hades is past. It re- 
lates to the period beyond the resurrection 
and the judgment, the final state. This is 
the true distinction and it is certainly plain, 
and easily comprehended, and quite as easily 
demonstrated. 

Not one of these words expresses duration. 
This is simply a fact, and to state it is no 
concession to any one, or to any doctrine. 
The idea of duration is incidental and conse- 
quential. Hades has duration, of necessity, 
as this world has, and as any thing has which 
has being. Its duration is limited, so far as 
humanity is concerned, to the period of this 
world's history, or to the time of the ex- 
istence of souls in the disembodied state. In 
the resurrection it will give up its dead, and 



THE TERMS EMPLOYED. 29 

pass away, at least so far as we are concerned. 
Therefore the punishment in it is not forever. 
And, therefore, those who prove that Hades 
is not a place of eternal punishment, have 
not gained a point, as they suppose they 
have, against the orthodox teaching, because 
they have not met the issue in dispute. 

So Gehenna has duration, though it is not 
expressed by the word. The duration is im- 
plied. But the state to which it applies is 
in eternity. It is beyond the resurrection. 
And there is no great fact beyond it. There 
is neither resurrection nor judgment to follow. 
So far as the Scriptures indicate, there is no 
limit to the state expressed by Gehenna. It 
follows from all this that Hades and Gehenna 
are quite different, and that they must be so 
recognized and treated, in order to an under- 
standing of the New Testament idea of the 
state of the dead, and the doctrine of future 
punishment. 

It often happens that when an issue is cor- 
rectly stated, the argument is half completed. 
At least much useless labor is saved. In the 
latest discussions of this subject, like the older 
ones, much time and learning and energy 



30 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

have been expended on false issues, or no 
issue at all. The learned Dr. Farrar, in his 
book called "Eternal Hope" betrays weak- 
ness in this respect. He finds ample reasons 
for objecting to the translation of so many 
original terms by the same English word, 
Hell, and then, instead of examining critically 
the original terms, he discusses at length the 
translation. In this he meets no issue. So 
also does he confuse the subject, and em- 
barrass himself, by treating incidentals as the 
main subject. 

Take an example. He thus states what 
he calls ''the common view," to which he 
objects: ''These four elements — which make 
the popular view far darker than that held in 
the Roman Church, and far darker even than 
that of St. Augustine — are I. The physical 
torments, the material agonies, the ' sapiens 
ignis,' of eternal punishment; 2. The suppo- 
sition of its necessarily endless duration for 
all who incur it; 3. The opinion that it is 
thus incurred by the vast mass of mankind, 
and 4. That it is a doom passed irreversibly at 
the moment of death on all who die in a 
state of sin." 



THE TERMS EMPLOYED. 31 

Of these "four elements," three are "ac- 
cretions." They do not form any necessary 
part of "the common doctrine" of eternal 
punishment, as taught in the New Testament. 
The "physical torments," and "material ag- 
onies," may be at once eliminated. They 
are no part of the doctrine. In the discus- 
sion of the nature of future punishment, they 
might be considered, if any one should affirm 
a view that would require it; but in an in- 
quiry concerning the fact of eternal punish- 
ment, this "element" is out of place. So 
also is it immaterial to the issue whether the 
"vast mass of mankind," or only relatively 
a small portion, shall incur the final doom. 
It is not a question of numbers, for the fact 
is equally palpable, and the doctrine just as 
true, if only a small number are finally lost, 
as if the vast mass were involved. Nor does 
it make any difference whether the doom is 
passed irreversibly at the moment of death, 
or is morally determined by the accumula- 
tions of guilt during life, and judicially an- 
nounced in the day of judgment. If it ever 
becomes "irreversible" there must be a mo- 
ment when the crisis is reached. Whether 



32 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

that be at death, or before, or after, is not the 
material fact. Thus these "four elements" 
are reduced to a single point, and that is the 
fact to be determined by testimony. It is 
simply a question — the same old question — 
whether eternal punishment is the possible 
doom of any portion of the human race. 

The time was when, in this discussion, it 
was necessary to affirm and maintain the fact 
that there is punishment after death. Now 
nearly all, if not quite all, who take the 
Scriptures as authority, admit this fact. Mr. 
Austin — Universalist — says, i * Universalism 
neither rejects nor adopts the doctrine of 
future punishment." It leaves its adherents 
to take such views on this subject as seem 
the most consistent to them. This prudence 
saves labor. It narrows down the issue, leav- 
ing only the question of finality or duration 
to be determined. This issue will be met 
by the application of the word Gehenna. It 
is met by Hades only in part. The exam- 
ination which we propose of these terms will 
settle the main fact, and lay the foundation 
for the study of terms which express duration. 



ERRORS ANTAGONIZED. 33 



Chapter II. 

ERRORS ANTAGONIZED. 

THE best way to oppose error is to assert 
the truth. But sometimes duty requires 
that truth be used aggressively. Indeed, it is 
agressive in its nature. That particular truth 
asserted in this treatise opposes divers errors, 
some of which are popular and deleterious, 
while others are more speculative and limited. 
The first is Universalism. This is an old 
heresy. It dates back in some form or other to 
the days of Origen. This Father doubted the 
eternity of future punishment, and expressed 
a hope for the restoration or those dying in 
sin. He was much given to fanciful interpre- 
tations of the Scriptures, and pursued meta- 
phorical and spiritual meanings beyond the 
limits of sober criticism. But his speculations 
were not generally accepted. Yet a vague 
line of Restorationism and Destructionism 

3 



34 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

may be traced through the opinions of the 
Fathers. They were not less curious than 
men of later times, and sought to penetrate 
the mysteries of the future with equal ear- 
nestness, and often with equal skill and learn- 
ing. Out of their speculations came the 
Romish dogma of Purgatory. But no well- 
defined system of Universalism was devel- 
oped. This is of modern growth. Its his- 
tory is instructive, but we can not trace it 
here. 

Under this general head we class all the 
forms of doctrine that assert the ultimate 
holiness and happiness of all the race. For- 
merly Restoration ists and Universalists were 
distinguished by broad lines of difference, 
having respect to the terms and process of 
salvation. Now the distinction is unimpor- 
tant. Nearly all admit suffering after death. 
And under this head most of the Unitarians 
are classed. But few believe in eternal pun- 
ishment. It is possible that some expect the 
wicked to drop out of existence. 

If the Bible authorizes the views herein 
set forth, then, in some way, somewhere in 
the universe, the incorrigible of the race will 






ERRORS ANTAGONIZED. 35 

be abandoned of God, and left to suffer for- 
ever the results of a life of sin. That some- 
where is Hell. At least it is called Hell in 
our language. Any other name would do as 
well, if it conveyed the idea. We do not 
contend about names. If the state were 
nameless, it would prove as deep and wide 
and solid and immovable. If any human 
soul fails forever of the happiness of heaven, 
Universal ism fails in all its forms. 

The next error antagonized is the__&2£^ 
sleeping doctrine of Adventists, and other 
materialists. This theory is old, and has 
linked itself from time to time with different 
systems, but in its essential features it is al- 
ways the same. It denies the essential differ- 
ence between spirit and matter, and insists 
that the soul dies with the body, or at least 
that it so far shares with the body as to lose 
consciousness. In most cases it is confounded 
with the body, and is supposed to have no 
life apart from the body. This is materialism. 
Of course those who entertain such ideas of 
the soul have no room for a separate state 
of souls, except as they may speak thus of 
the silence and darkness and stillness of the 



36 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

unconscious and non-existent state. And 
very naturally this class deny consciousness 
to the wicked in their final abode. Some of 
them hold that the ungodly die as the beasts 
that perish, and have no hereafter. Others 
suppose that the unconsciousness will be 
broken by the resurrection of soul and body, 
to be again consigned to the sleep that knows 
no waking, after the judgment -day. With 
these theoretical details we have nothing to 
do. They rest on a false basis; their philos- 
ophy is gross and shallow; and they are all 
at variance with the Scriptures. 

If Hades be the state of departed souls, 
there are departed souls. It is not a state of 
nothingness. In it are the consciousness and 
memory and will and sensibilities of real 
personalities, disembodied though they be. 
There, too, is the home of the angels that 
sinned. Then, if the soul be spiritual — if it 
survive death — if it carry with it the ele- 
ments of character gained on earth, then the 
invisible world is a world of activity, of emo- 
tion, of joy, and of pain and of despair. 
The world which the Bible calls Hetdes is as 
real as this, and immeasurablv vaster in all 



ERRORS ANTAGONIZED. 37 

that is good and great in its heavenward as- 
pects, and all that is dark and ruinous in the 
surroundings of the unsaved. It is a world 
of spirits, where the pure share the delights 
of heaven, and the impure bewail the fol- 
lies of the past, and dread the deepening 
shadows of the unpromising future. 

It is an intermediate state. Intermediate, 
not necessarily as between earth and heaven, 
in the sense of locality or place or space, but 
in the sense of time between death and the 
resurrection. The good reach not their high- 
est destiny till they rise in the "resurrection 
of the just," and "put on immortality" with 
respect to the "mortal" part that returned 
to dust. And the wicked will not reach 
their final doom till they "come forth unto 
the resurrection of damnation." The unjust 
are "reserved unto the day of judgment 
to be punished." Canon Farrar thought that 
the doctrine of an intermediate state would 
mitigate the rigidity of the common con- 
ception of future punishment, but seems 
not to have been able to find a place for 
it without resorting to the mediaeval no- 
tion of place, and admitting the essential 



38 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

thought of a Romish purgatory. It is, how- 
ever, in harmony with the New Testament 
idea of Hades that we hold to an interme- 
diate state, in which character is fixed and 
destiny certain, with no purifying element in 
the flames of lust and hate with which the 
ungodly are tormented. It is neither limbus 
nor purgatory ; nor is it the highest heaven 
or the deepest hell. So far as locality is con- 
cerned, the good are in paradise, and this the 
apostle called the " third heaven." The re- 
deemed from earth, even before the resurrec- 
tion are "before the throne of God, and serve 
him day and night in his temple." 

Another prevalent error, antagonized by 
the Scriptural doctrine of Hades and Gehenna, 
is found in connection with modern specula- 
tions concerning the resurrection of the dead. 
For the want of a better descriptive term, we 
may designate the particular view of the resur- 
rection to which we allude, the progressive 
theory. It rejects the notion that the body 
shall rise, and assumes that the resurrection 
state is gained immediately after death. Of 
course, it has no room for an intermediate 
state. 



ERRORS ANTAGONIZED. 39 

This progressive theory of the resurrection 
owes its origin in its modern form to the 
dreamy philosophy of Swedenborg. It was 
formulated by him and his admirers, and vig- 
orously set forth and advocated by Professor 
Bush, some thirty years ago, and since then 
has found much favor with theologians of dif- 
ferent schools, and has been accepted as an 
important part of diverse systems of doc- 
trine. Its influence is felt in the Evangelical 
Churches, as well as in others. Universalists 
and Unitarians, of different shades of opinion 
in regard to spiritual truths, very generally 
fall in with this theory of the resurrection. 
It is, therefore, sufficiently formidable to de- 
serve the notice we give it. 

Let us state it more definitely. It as- 
sumes that man is possessed of a compound 
nature ; that this nature consists of body, 
soul, and spirit ; that the body is material, 
earthy, sensual; that the soul is spiritual, 
ethereal, immortal ; that the spirit is pure 
spirit, incorruptible and, of course, immortal. 
All this sounds well, and is plausible to phil- 
osophical minds, while it apparently harmo- 
nizes with the language of Scripture. No 



40 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

error is so dangerous as that which sounds 
and looks like the truth. But we must look 
again. This theory assumes that the spirit is 
the substratum of being, the essence of per- 
sonality, the real ego or selfhood of the man; 
that the soul, the seat of sensations and emo- 
tions, is the vesture or inner casement of the 
spirit; and that the body is the outer case- 
ment, or the vehicle or tabernacle of the soul, 
and the link of connection with the material 
world. It assumes, furthermore, that death 
cuts the link that binds man to earth and to 
material things, dissolves the tabernacle and 
consigns it to its original dust, where it abides, 
without hope of rising again, while the soul 
emerges from its confinement in the house of 
clay, and develops into the full character of 
the resurrection or spiritual body, in which 
the spirit resides forever. Accordingly, the 
body has no share in the rising again, and 
the resurrection occurs immediately at the 
hour of death, and as soon as the spiritual 
body frees itself from the impurities and evil 
tendencies contracted in the body, the full 
blessedness of the resurrection state is at- 
tained. As a theory, this is all beautiful; 



ERRORS ANTAGONIZED. 41 

but it is not found in the Scriptures ; it has 
no place for the second coming of Christ, for 
the general judgment, for an intermediate 
state, for a simultaneous rising again, or for 
the redemption of our bodies. Its assump- 
tions in regard to soul and spirit are un- 
sound. It is fatally lacking in philosophy 
and Scripture warrant, and we therefore pre- 
sent it as one of the subtle heresies antago- 
nized by the teachings of our Lord with refer- 
ence to Hades and Gehenna. 

There are some errors prevalent in the 
Church, in regard to the use and application 
of these terms, which are not classed with 
heresies, but are held, or rather entertained, 
by orthodox believers in future punishment, 
and which confuse the mind and weaken the 
arguments in support of right conclusions, 
and therefore ought to be corrected. These, 
however, will appear and find correction in 
the course of the argument, but to indicate 
them here may shorten the work and facilitate 
the result. 

It is popularly supposed that Gehenna is 
part of Hades, and that the wicked enter 
it when they enter Hades. The opposite of 



42 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

this has been stated, and will be maintained. 
There is no passage that requires such a belief, 
while the whole current of testimony is against 
it. And yet the entire force of argument 
against the doctrine of Hell is directed against 
this erroneous view. The simple correction 
of it destroys a great portion of the opposing 
arguments, and especially those which assume 
the form of criticism in connection with the 
original terms. Hades is before the resurrec- 
tion, and Gehenna is after that consummation. 
The doctrine of Hell carries with it the 
idea of the existence of fallen angels as its in- 
habitants. These are the devils. They were 
once good, as all created beings were created 
good, but they fell under the leadership of a 
chief, revealed to us as Beelzebub, the prince 
of the devils. The popular notion is that their 
original home was in heaven — the heaven to 
which we aspire, which is the home of God, 
and the abode of holy angels and the re- 
deemed from earth. This popular notion is 
not well founded. It overlooks important 
facts. The law of the universe appears to be 
that all intelligent, responsible beings, des- 
tined to the development of moral character 



ERRORS ANTAGONIZED. 43 

as the basis of moral condition, should have 
their first existence on probation. The pro- 
bation of man is not an exception but the 
rule of the divine government over the moral 
creation. In harmony with this the angels 
were first placed on trial, somewhere in the 
wide domain of the Almighty. Some of 
them kept the law of their probation, were 
confirmed in holiness, and ascended to the 
home and companionship of God, and are 
now the ''holy angels." Others of them 
"kept not their first estate," but "left their 
own habitation/' and violated the law of 
their probation, and, under the leadership of 
Satan, fell into condemnation. These are 
now "the angels that sinned, ,, "reserved 
under chains of darkness unto judgment. " 
Where "their own habitation" was, is not 
revealed. It was somewhere in the universe, 
and, in the symbolical language of the Book 
of Revelation, the word "heaven" will in- 
clude it, though it was not the heaven of 
heavens, where sin never enters, where the 
good abide, forever free from the possibility 
of defection. These angels that sinned are 
in Tartarus. This is another word for that 



44 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

portion of Hades, or for that state in the in- 
visible world, where the unholy abide. It is 
not so general a word as Hades, nor is it at 
all like Gehenna. It belongs to Hades, but it 
has no connection with Gehenna. 

Another misapprehension on this subject 
is, that the devil and his angels are in the 
final Hell of the lost, the "lake of fire." 
Gehenna. We have already intimated that 
this can not be other than a misapprehension. 
The devils are yet in Tartarus. This is in 
Hades, or coexistent with Hades. It is on 
this side of the period of the resurrection, 
and therefore this side of the judgment-day. 
But it is at the judgment that the devils, with 
the unsaved of earth, will be cast into the 
"everlasting fire" — Gehenna. No one enters 
there until judicially assigned to it at the judg- 
ment-day. Then when the "devil and his 
angels" reach the "lake of fire/' they will 
tempt the people of God no more. Their 
access to earth will be over. 

But now they have access to mortals. 
Here is their field of action. When cast out 
of that "heaven" which was "their own 
habitation," they were cast out "into the 



ERRORS ANTAGONIZED. 45 

earth." They are in the invisible world, yet 
they are here. The visible and invisible 
worlds are not wide apart. They lie in close 
proximity. We can not trace the line be- 
tween them. We can not lift the veil that 
separates them. Darkness covers the earth. 
Invisibility is all around us. If our eyes 
were opened we might see the mountains 
and hills covered with the chariots of God. 
The invisible laps and interlaps with the 
visible; the two worlds trench, but do not 
blend; they touch, attract, repel, impress, 
and move on together, as matter and spirit 
can, yet they remain distinct. Here then is 
the war of spiritual forces. Here is the thea- 
ter of Satan's activity, and here is the seat 
of his empire. The lordship of this world 
is the prize for which he contends. Here 
are gathered all the spiritual forces of sin that 
the universe contains. And this is the reason 
the incarnation was here. Christ came into 
the heart of the kingdom of Satan, met him 
in the citadal of his power, grappled him in 
the domain of death, and wrenched from 
his grasp the keys of Hades. "For this 



46 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

purpose the Son of God was manifested, that 
he might destroy the works of the devil." 

But this chapter is to state errors and mis- 
conceptions of the truth, not to refute them. 
The refutation is the result to be reached. 
The preliminary statement is to aid in the 
application of the argument, as we proceed, 
and to forestall objections that lie only against 
incorrect presentations of the doctrine advo- 
cated. The next chapter will deal with au- 
thorities, and is given because there are so 
many who are timid about accepting any 
doctrinal position that is not supported by 
the influence of great names. 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 47 



Chapter III. 

HADES— AUTHORITIES. 

AS already said, the meaning of the word 
Hades is not in dispute. It means the 
invisible world, the dwelling place of souls. 
All classes of religionists agree to this. 

The origin of the word may not be traced 
with absolute certainty, nor is it important 
that it should be. In Homer's time it was a 
name, and seems to have designated a person 
or divinity whose special dominion was in 
the under world, which is unseen. But upon 
this point it will be sufficient to cite the fol- 
lowing from Smith's " Classical Dictionary :" 

"Hades, or Pluto, the god of the nether 
world. Plato observes that people preferred 
calling him Pluto (the giver of wealth) to 
pronouncing the dreaded name of Hades. 
Hence we find that in ordinary life and in 
the mysteries the name Pluto became gen- 
erally established, while the poets preferred 



48 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

the ancient name Hades or the form Pleuteus. 
The Roman poets use the names Dis, Orcus, 
and Tartarus as synonymous with Pluto, or 
the god of the nether world. Hades was the 
son of Saturn and Rhea, and brother of Jupi- 
ter and Neptune. . ... In the division 
of the world among the three brothers, Ha- 
des (Pluto) obtained the nether world, the 
abode of the shades, over which he ruled. 
Hence he is called the infernal Jupiter, or 
the king- of the shades. He possessed a hel- 
met which rendered the wearer invisible. . . . 
He kept the gates of the lower world closed, 
that no shades might be able to escape or 
return to the regions of light. . . . Be- 
ing the king of the lower world, Pluto is the 
giver of all the blessings that come from the 
earth ; he is the possessor and giver of all the 
metals contained in the earth, and hence his 
name Pluto. He bears several surnames re- 
ferring to his ultimately assembling all mor- 
tals in his kingdom. . . . His ordinary 
attributes are the key of Hades and Cer- 
berus, ... In Homer Hades is invariably 
the name of the god; but in later times it 
was transferred to his house, his abode or 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 49 

kingdom, so that it became a name of the 
nether world." 

To this we add from Anthon's " Classic 
Dictionary" the following: "Hades, the 
place of departed spirits, according to Grecian 
mythology, from a, not, and eido, to see, as 
denoting the lower or invisible world. Its 
divisions were Elysium and Tartarus, the 
respective abodes of good and bad. In Ho- 
meric times, however, this arrangement formed 
no part of the popular creed. The earliest 
beliefs did not separate the invisible world 
into apartments, but represented the souls 
of the dead as pursuing much the same em- 
ployments, and showing the same passions 
and characteristics, as on earth. It was in 
the later developments of thought that the 
world of spirits was divided into the higher 
and lower abodes, for the good and bad, 
and this later conception prevailed among 
the Hebrews as well as the Greeks and Ro- 
mans, and formed the staple belief down to 
the time of the advent of Christ." 

The following from "M'Clintock and 
Strong's Cyclopaedia," is in harmony with the 
foregoing: "Hades, a Greek word (derived 



SO NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

according to the best established and most 
generally received etymology, from priva- 
tive a, and idien) means strictly what is out 
of sight, or possibly, if applied to a person, 
what puts out of sight. In earlier Greek this 
last was, if not its only, at. least its prevailing 
application; in Homer it occurs only as the 
personal designation of Pluto, the lord of the 
invisible world, and who was probably so 
designated, not from being himself invisible — 
for that belonged to him in common with 
the heathen gods generally — but from his 
power to render mortals invisible, the invisi- 
ble-making deity. The Greeks, however, in 
process of time, abandoned this use of Hades, 
and when the Greek Scriptures were written the 
word was scarcely ever applied except to the 
place of the departed. In the classical writers, 
therefore, it is used to denote Orcus, or the 
infernal regions. In the Greek version of the 
Old Testament it is the common rendering 
for the Hebrew Sheol y though in the form 
there often appears a remnant of the original 
personified application; for example, in Gen- 
esis xxxvii, 35, il I will go down to my son 
eis hadou y that is, into the abodes or house 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 5 1 

of Hades {domous or oikon being understood). 
This elliptical form was common both in the 
classics and in Scripture, even after Hades 
was never thought of but as a region or place 
of abode." 

Perhaps as clear and satisfactory a descrip- 
tion of Hades and Gehenna, and especially of 
the difference between them, as can be found 
in the language, is in Dr. George Campbell's 
Dissertations, in which all that is said above 
is corroborated, and the general positions of 
this book, with perhaps a single exception, 
are sustained. Of Hades, Dr. Campbell says, 
"The corresponding word in the Old Testa- 
ment is Sheol, which signifies the state of the 
dead in general, without regard to the good- 
ness or badness of the persons, their happiness 
or misery. In translating the word the LXX 
have almost invariably used Hades." After 
verifying and illustrating this general state- 
ment, he adds: "So much then for the literal 
sense of the word Hades, which, as has been 
observed, implies neither hell nor grave ; but 
the place or state of departed souls." (Diss, 
pp. 180-191.) 

In William Smith's "Comprehensive Die- 



52 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

tionary of the Bible " we read: "The ancient 
Greeks and Hebrews seem to have agreed 
in representing Hades or Sheol as (i.) the 
common receptacle of departed spirits, good 
and bad; (2.) divided into two compartments, 
the one an Elysium or abode of bliss for the 
good, the other a Tartarus, or abode of 
sorrow and punishment for the wicked; (3.) 
situated under ground, in the mid regions 
of the earth. But while the heathen had no 
prospect beyond its shadowy realms, the be- 
lieving Hebrew regarded Sheol as only his 
temporary and intermediate abode. In the 
New Testament, Hades, like Sheol, sometimes 
merely equals the grave (Rev. xx, 13; Acts 
ii, 31 ; 1 Cor. xv, 55); or in general the unseen 
world. It is in this sense that the creeds say 
of our lord ' He went down into Hell,' mean- 
ing the state of the dead in general, without 
any restriction of happiness or misery, a doc- 
trine certainly, though only virtually, ex- 
pressed in Scripture (Eph. iv, 9 ; Acts ii, 25- 
31). Elsewhere in the New Testament Hades 
is used of a place of torment. (Luke xvi, 23 ; 
Matt, xi, 23, etc.) Consequently it has been 
the prevalent, almost the universal, notion 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 53 

that Hades is an intermediate state, between 
death and the resurrection, divided into two 
parts, one the abode of the blessed and the other 
of the lost. The expression most frequently 
used in the New Testament for the place of fu- 
ture punishment is Gehenna or Gehenna of fire." 
The only dissent from this that needs to 
be mentioned, is the fact that Hades, in the 
New Testament, never means the grave, and 
should never be taken as relating in any way 
to the dead body. We might quote authori- 
ties similar to the above indefinitely, includ- 
ing lexicographers, critics, commentators, 
historians, and theologians of all classes and 
of all schools of belief; for it is remarkable 
that, after all that has been said and written 
in the advocacy of so many conflicting views 
of the state of the dead, there is scarcely any 
difference anywhere discoverable among men 
whose opinions are of any weight in regard 
to the meaning of this word. We might 
therefore close this chapter, and proceed to 
the New Testament use of Hades, but, for 
the satisfaction of those who do not have 
access to many books, a few more brief cita- 
tions will be given. 



54 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Trench on the Parables, in expounding 
the case of the rich man and Lazarus, gives 
the following: "In Hell, or in Hades rather; 
for as Abraham's bosom is not heaven, 
though it will issue in heaven, so neither is 
Hades hell, though to issue in it, when cast 
with death into the lake of fire, which is the 
proper hell. It is the place of painful re- 
straint, where the souls of the wicked are 
reserved to the judgment of the great day ; 
it is 'the deep,' whither the devils prayed 
that they might not be sent to be tormented 
before the time," etc. 

Dr. Knapp says, 4< This place was denom- 
inated by the Hebrews Sheol — by the Greeks 
Hades, the word by which the LXX always 
translate Shedl. Neither of these is used in 
the Scriptures to signify exactly the grave, 
still less, the place of the damned ; nor are 
they used in this sense by any of the Fathers 
in the first three centuries." The word was 
applied by the Fathers, according to its 
proper meaning, neither to the receptacle 
of the dead body nor to the final state of 
the lost, but to the state of the soul this 
side of the resurrection of the dead. It was 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 55 

this use of the word that gave rise to the 
abuse that began to show itself, perhaps ear- 
lier than the close of the third century, in 
connection with the intermediate state, and 
resulted in the Romish invention of the Lim- 
bus, wherein those unfitted for heaven or hell, 
were supposed to be detained till purified. 
Purgatory, as now held by Romanists, is but 
the growth and development of this fanciful 
notion of the Fathers, and has no foundation 
whatever in the right use of Hades, as found 
in the Scriptures. 

Universalist writers of respectability hesi- 
tate not a moment in agreeing with the 
statements above given. Some of them have 
inclined to give the word the meaning of 
grave, as Sheol is so rendered in the Old Tes- 
tament, and as Hades is so translated once in 
the New Testament; but the attempt to so 
interpret it is now nearly, if not wholly, 
abandoned. Indeed it is doubted that one 
can be found who will contend for the word 
grave as an equivalent of Hades. The testi- 
timony in favor of the application to the 
state of the soul after death is overwhelming, 
so that there is in reality no other side to the 



56 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

subject. Ballou, Balfour, Pingree, Thomas, 
Rogers, Austin, Thayer, Gur\ey y Weaver, 
Nye, Williamson — in short, all who have 
shaped the system in this country, and 
brought it to its present standing, concur in 
applying Hades to the state of the dead in 
general, and calling it the unseen world. 

Canon Farrar, whose recent utterances on 
the subject of a possible probation after death 
have produced so much astonishment on one 
hand, and gratification on the other, and who 
is, in consequence, in such high esteem by 
all "liberalists," does not venture upon any 
definition of this word contrary to that herein 
presented and maintained. In his prefatory 
dissertation he says: ''One of the three words 
rendered 'hell' occurs but once, in 2 Peter, ii, 
4. It is the Greek Tartarus, and ought to be 
so rendered. It can not be rendered 'hell/ 
for it refers to an intermediate state previous 
to judgment. Another is Hades, which is the 
exact equivalent of the Hebrew SJieol, as a 
place for both the bad and the Good. (Acts ii, 
27-36.) It tells directly against the received 
notion of * hell,' because (like Tartarus in 
2 Peter, ii, 4) it means an intermediate state 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 5 7 

of the soul previous to judgment." (Preface 
to "Eternal Hope.") 

The learned doctor, though prompt to as- 
sume that this word "tells directly against 
the received notion of hell" — by which he re- 
fers to a final state of "material torture" — 
gives correct definitions, and also recognizes 
the important fact of a "judgment" after the 
intermediate state. We make no issue with 
him here, but commend this particular view 
of the subject to the consideration of his cor- 
dial admirers, who may be so taken up with 
his glittering rhetoric as to overlook the log- 
ical bearing of this fatal concession. 

The following summary of the ancient 
notions on this subject by Dr. J. M. Good, 
will be in place here. After speaking of the 
doctrine of the Platonists and others who had 
imbibed the idea of ultimate absorption into 
the Deity, he says: "While such were the 
philosophical traditions, the popular tradition 
appears to have been of a different kind, and 
as much more ancient as it was more exten- 
sive. It taught that the disembodied spirit 
became a ghost as soon as it separated from 
the corporeal frame; a thin, misty, aerial form, 



5 8 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

somewhat larger than life, with feeble voice, 
shadowy limbs; knowledge superior to what 
was possessed while in the flesh; capable, 
under particular circumstances, of rendering 
itself visible; and retaining so much of its 
former features as to be recognized upon its 
apparition ; in a few instances wandering about 
for a certain period of time after death, but 
for the most part conveyed to a common re- 
ceptacle situated in the interior of the earth, 
and denominated Shed I, Hades , or the world 
of shades. Such was the general belief of 
the multitude in almost all countries from a 
very early period of time; with this differ- 
ence, that the Hades of various nations was 
supposed to exist in some remote situation 
on the surface of the earth, and that of 
others in the clouds. . . . In many parts 
of the world, though not in all, this com- 
mon tradition of the people was carried much 
farther, and, under different modifications, 
made to develop a very important and correct 
doctrine; for it was believed in most coun- 
tries, that this hell, Hades, or invisible world, 
is divided into two very distinct and opposite 
regions by a broad and impassable gulf; that 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 59 

the one is a seat of happiness, a paradise, or 
Elysium, and the other a seat of misery, a 
Gehewna or Tartarus; and that there is a 
supreme magistrate and an impartial tribunal 
belonging to the infernal shades, before which 
the ghost must appear, and by which he is 
sentenced to the one or the other, according 
to the deeds done in the body." 

As this was the popular belief among 
nearly all nations long before the coming of 
Christ, and as it accords so nearly with the 
teachings of the Hebrew prophets, and with 
the prevalent notions of the Jews in the Mes- 
siah's own time, and was not contradicted 
but rather corroborated by him in his para- 
bles, in its main features, we must conclude 
with the learned Doctor quoted above that 
though found in the earliest records of Egyp- 
tian history, it was not invented by them, 
but "had a higher origin, and that it consti- 
tuted a part of the patriarchal or antediluvian 
creed, retained in a few channels, though for- 
gotten or obliterated in others; and conse- 
quently, that it w r as a divine communication 
in a very early age." 

Bishop Pierson, on the creed, says that 



60 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Hades was used among the ancient Greeks as 
comprehending all the souls both of the 
wicked and the just; hence they did send 
the best men to Hades, there to be happ) r , 
and taught rewards to be received there as 
well as punishments." 

Dr. Alex. M'Leod tells us that "it is a 
general term for the place of departed spirits: 
as if we should say, such a one is gone to 
the invisible world; he is dead; he is gone to 
the world of spirits." 

Dr. Samuel Clarke says: "Whenever the 
place of torment is spoken of, the word hell 
in the original is always Gehenna; but when- 
ever the state of the dead, in general, is in- 
tended, it is always expressed by a different 
word, Hades, which though we render by the 
same word, hell, yet its signification is, at 
large, the invisible state." 

Dr. A. Clarke says: "Hades, the place of 
separate spirits. The sea and death have the 
bodies of all human beings; Hades has their 
spirits." 

Dr. Lange's "Commentary on Luke xvi, 
says: "Hades is the general designation of 
departed spirits." 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 6 1 

Dr. Hodge says of Hades and the English 
word hell: ''Both mean the unseen world. 
The one signifies what is unseen, the other 
what is covered and thus hidden from view. 
In Scriptural language, therefore, to 
descend into Hades or hell, means nothing 
more than to descend to the grave, to pass 
from the visible into the invisible world, as 
happens to all men when they die and are 
buried." 

Mr. J. Wesley says, of the rich man: 
"In Hades \ that is, in the unseen or invisi- 
ble world. It must be observed that both 
the rich man and Lazarus were in Hades, 
though in different regions of it." 

Dr. Whedon, on the same passage, says: 
"In hell, or Hades, or the great unseen; that 
is the invisible place, or region of disem- 
bodied spirits." 

Bishop Beveridge, in his "Exposition of 
the Thirty-nine Articles," says: "Though 
therefore we can not but acknowledge that 
the Greek word Hades may sometimes, both 
in Scripture and other writings, signify no 
more than the receptacle of souls in general, 
as the grave is the receptacle of the bodies; 



62 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

yet it can not be denied but that it often, if 
not mostly, is used to express the receptacle 
of sinful souls in particular, or that which 
we in English call Hell, the place of the 
damned." This eminent writer affirms that 
the ancient poets often used Hades to sig- 
nify the other world in general, even in as 
large a sense as thanatos, for which it was 
often employed, and in attestation he cites 
examples from Homer, Sophocles,* Pindar, 
and Theognis ; and this, too, while he was 
contending for its restricted sense, where it 
was used with reference to the soul of Christ, 
which descended into it but was not left 
there. 

Numberless quotations might be made to 
the same effect, but these will suffice. They 
have not been selected at random, but with 
reference to variety. Their voice is the echo 
of all Christian "learning. We therefore pro- 
ceed with confidence, not to establish some- 
thing new, but to use and apply this old 
truth, which is sustained by the uniform tes- 
timony of Romanist and Protestant, Ortho- 
dox and Liberalist. The only new point we 
insist upon is the entire separation of Gehenna 



HADES— AUTHORITIES. 63 

from Hades, and this is amply justified by 
the authorities of all schools and all Churches, 
as well as by the necessity of the case. We 
now turn to the final authority, the New 
Testament. 



64 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 



Chapter IV. 

HADES— SCRIPTURE USE. 

AFTER all the light the authorities afford 
in regard to this word, the ordinary- 
reader of the Scriptures will desire to see 
these testimonies verified by an examination 
of the several passages in which the word 
is found. We therefore proceed to a brief 
glance at each occurrence of Hades in the 
New Testament, dwelling only so long as is 
necessary to gather the idea of the text in its 
bearing on the subject in hand. 

As before said, this word is used eleven 
times in the New Testament. But in several 
instances it is duplicated or repeated in the 
same connection, so that in reality it is found 
in only eight passages. These are in the 
Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and Revela- 
tion. In some places the language is figura- 
tive, and in others the word is to be taken in 



HADES— SCRIPTURE USE. 65 

its most literal sense. In all cases, however, 
its real meaning is easily traced, and its appli- 
cation to the invisible world of spirits, and 
not to the ultimate condition of the lost, is 
readily seen. 

It is first used, somewhat figuratively, with 
reference to Capernaum, both by Matthew 
and Luke. "And thou, Capernaum, which 
art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought 
down to Hades; for if the mighty works 
which have been done in thee, had been done 
in Sodom, it would have remained until this 
day." (Alatt. xi, 23.) "And thou Caper- 
naum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be 
thrust down to Hades" (Luke x, 15.) The 
discourse is the same, recorded by the two 
evangelists. Capernaum was the most fa- 
vored place in the world, by reason of the 
fact that our Savior made it his home the 
greater part of the time during his public min- 
istry in Galilee. Here he taught and wrought 
as nowhere else. And yet he foresaw the 
coming desolation, and warned the inhab- 
itants of their coming degradation. "Thou 
shalt be brought down to Hades" — to the 
state of the dead. If there is any pas- 

5 



66 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

sage where Hades is used metaphorically for 
earthly desolations, this is the one ; yet here 
the sense is retained. The dead are popularly 
considered deprived of all privileges. To be 
cast down from so great a height to so great 
a depth was an extreme judgment. The 
word is here used for the opposite of heaven. 
In the popular conception it signified the 
state of the dead, and therefore the very low- 
est possible condition ; so that this meta- 
phorical use did not mislead, though it does 
not exhaust the meaning of the word. The 
sense it yields is good, if taken wholly in the 
figurative sense ; for the desolation did come, 
so that for man) 7 years it has scarcely been 
possible to identify the place where this once 
favored little city stood. And if we look be- 
yond the figurative use of the word, to see 
the ground of the metaphor in its literal 
meaning, the point is well sustained. It is 
the under world, the invisible state, the state 
of disembodied souls. The use of such a 
word to denote the desolation of the city, 
gave a striking picture of the utter ruin await- 
ing the people, besides suggesting that their 
final accountability would be revealed in the 



HADES— SCRIPTURE USE. 67 

invisible world rather than in this world. 
Altogether the passage is in the strictest har- 
mony with the sense we claim for this word, 
although its use here would go but a little 
way towards fixing its real meaning, if this 
were the only passage containing it. 

It is next found in the following very fa- 
miliar passage: "And I say also unto thee, 
that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will 
build my Church, and the gates of Hades 
shall not prevail against it." (Matt, xvi, 18.) 
The idea is, that the Church of Christ is 
built upon so strong a foundation, and so 
well guarded, that all the powers of the un- 
seen world can not successfully oppose it. 
"The gates of Hades" may be taken as the 
passage-way to the unseen state; that is, 
death. Through death we enter the invisible 
world. Then the sense is that the Church 
shall not be destroyed by the death of all 
its members. As some die others w 7 ill take 
their places, and thus perpetuate the Church 
through all the ages. But this is the lowest 
and most literal sense of the words, and by 
no means expresses their force. The Church 
is a citadel, founded upon a rock, withstand- 



68 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

ing siege and assault. The word "gates" 
denotes powers, as the strongest attacks are 
upon the gates, and the sudden sorties and 
dashes upon the enemies' lines issue from the 
"gates." So, also, it means devices, skill, 
strategy, as in olden times the judges and 
counselors sat in the gates and planned for 
war and for peace. The force and cunning 
of the enemy are expressed by the meta- 
phor of the "gates." The leader in this 
Avar upon the Church is Satan. His home is 
in the invisible world. His army is com- 
posed of the angels that sinned. He reaches 
the Church, in his fiercest assaults, through 
the agency of the unbelieving and irreligious 
of this world. He commands the forces of 
ignorance and learning, of science and super- 
stition, and uses the high and the low, the 
refined and the vulgar, as the occasion re- 
quires. But all his malice and cunning, and 
all his experience and power, will be em- 
ployed in vain. "The gates of Hades shall 
not prevail." The citadel will never be car- 
ried. Hades has its ordinary meaning here, 
its popular meaning as the invisible world of 
darkness. It is co-existent with the Church 



HADES— SCRIPTURE USE. 69 

in this world. From it issue the forces that 
give the Church its sorest trials. 

The next passage is more expressive. It 
is the case of the rich man. Luke xvi, 23 : 
"The rich man also died, and was buried; 
and in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in 
torments," etc. This will be fully considered 
in a subsequent chapter. For the present it 
is enough to look at the relation in which the 
word stands to death. The rich man first 
died; he died literally, and was buried; and 
then he was found in Hades, the state of the 
dead. This is natural. There is no sort of 
difficulty in accepting the statement in the 
literal sense. The man died and was imme- 
diately in Hades. The body was buried, and 
the soul, the real man, was in the disem- 
bodied state. 

Whether this be parable or not does not 
affect the sense of this word. In any view we 
take of the events described, the representa- 
tion is made of two men dying, and of one it 
is said that after death he lifted up his eyes 
in Hades, being in torment. The represen- 
tation is true to fact, or it is false and mis- 
leading. The latter can not, therefore the 



70 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

former must, be admitted. The representa- 
tion is true to fact. Men die, and after 
death appear in Hades, the invisible world. 
They appear at once, without delay, and in a 
conscious state, so as to be "comforted " or 
"tormented," according to condition. This 
is fact, not fiction. And thus far it settles 
the meaning of the word. It settles it by 
higher authority than lexicons or commenta- 
ries, by the last arbiter of words — use ; and 
by use that can not be wrong, for it is in the 
discourse of our Lord himself. 

We next find the word used in the Acts 
of the Apostles,, and so as to confirm the 
foregoing and shed further light. The lan- 
guage is Peter's ; the occasion, the Pente- 
cost ; the subject, the resurrection of Christ; 
the words, a quotation from the sixteenth 
Psalm, with comments: "Therefore did my 
heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad ; more- 
over also my flesh shall rest in hope, because 
thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither 
wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see cor- 
ruption. Thou hast made known to me the 
ways of life; thou shalt make full of joy with 
thy countenance." Thus far the quotation; 



HADES— SCRIPTURE USE 71 

now the comment: "Men and brethren, let 
me freely speak unto you of the patriarch 
David, that he is both dead and buried, and his 
sepulcher is with us unto this day. There- 
fore being a prophet, and knowing that God 
had sworn with an oath to him, that of the 
fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he 
would raise up Christ to sit on his throne: 
he, seeing this before, spake of the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, that his soul was not left in 
Hades, neither his flesh did see corruption." 
Acts ii, 26-31. 

The resurrection of Christ consisted of two 
distinct facts — the coming back of the soul 
from Hades, and the escape of the body from 
the power of death. Here begins the asso- 
ciation of death and Hades, which, as we ad- 
vance, we shall find uninterrupted, and very 
significant. It recognizes the dual nature of 
man, and the separation that death produces, 
and that continues till the resurrection of the 
dead. Death takes the body, and turns it 
over to corruption ; and Hades receives the 
soul, and holds it as long as it is separated 
from the body. This proves all we affirm. 



72 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

It shows that Hades is the receptacle of 
disembodied souls; that they enter it at once, 
and abide there till the resurrection; and that 
they leave it in the resurrection, while the 
body escapes the dominion of death. Thus 
Christ arose. His soul came back from Hades, 
and his body came back from death before it 
saw corruption. And this is the pattern of 
our resurrection. Who, then, can doubt that 
the body participates? 

This Scripture is the warrant for the asser- 
tion in the Apostles' Creed, which has occa- 
sioned so much discussion, that Christ "de- 
scended into hell." The trouble is with the 
English word. His soul entered Hades, yet 
not in the sense of going into the abode of 
the lost. On the day he died he entered 
''paradise/' the place of the pure and the 
good. It was the invisible world, — the sep- 
arate state of souls, — where the body did not 
go. Hades, in its broadest and truest sense, 
includes paradise, as well as the abode of the 
condemned. It includes the spirits of just 
men made perfect, the countless millions of 
the redeemed before the throne of God, as 



HADES— SCRIPTURE USE. 73 

well as the myriads that sink in darkness, and 
cry with the rich man, "for I am tormented 
in this flame." 

We now turn to 1 Cor. xv, 55: "O death, 
where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy 
victory ?" Here only is Hades translated 
"grave" — a rendering that should never 
occur, for the reason that Hades is the recep- 
tacle of the soul, not of the body. The pas- 
sage is an application of the sentiment in 
Hosea xiii, 14: "O death, I will be thy 
plagues; O Hades, I will be thy destruction." 
It is not a quotation nor a translation, but 
an application, and an application in Paul's 
words. The subject was the resurrection, 
which delivers the body from death and the 
soul from Hades. Death had held possession 
of the body, and the resurrection had just 
rescued it, in the consummation which the 
Apostle described; hence his triumphant ex- 
clamation, "O death, where is thy sting?" 
Hades had held possession of the soul until 
the same blessed triumph; hence the excla- 
mation, "O Hades, where is thy victory?" 
Death and Hades are joined together in their 
dominion and in their destruction. This fact 



74 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

is worthy of note. It means that the resur- 
rection affects both. It takes the soul out 
of the separate state and the body out of the 
power of death. The resurrection is of the 
w T hole person, but not as held by those who 
expect the soul to repose in death with the 
body. Paul was not a materialist of that 
kind ; nor was he such a spiritualist as to ex- 
clude the body from any share in the resur- 
rection. He believed in the destruction of 
death. There could be no resurrection with- 
out it. Death must be swallowed up in vic- 
tory. The mortal must put on immortality. 
And this in a moment, in the twinkling of 
an eye, at the last trump. It is not at the 
moment of death, but at the moment of the 
destruction of death. It is not when the 
soul enters Hades, but when it leaves Hades. 
The crowning act of the Redeeming power 
of our Lord Jesus Christ is the destruction 
of death and Hades. 

In the next passage containing Hades, we 
find it in like manner joined with death, as it 
is indeed in all the passages yet to be con- 
sidered: "I am he that liveth, and was dead; 
and, behold I am alive for evermore, Amen; 



HADES— SCRIPTURE USE. 75 

and have the keys of Hades and of death. " 
(Rev. i, 18.) This is the victorious language 
of Christ, after his resurrection. The ''keys" 
are symbols of authority. The possession 
of them by the risen Lord denotes the fact 
that he had the power and the right to un- 
lock the gates of death and Hades, and release 
whom he would and when he would. He is 
the Lord of the unseen world, and the con- 
queror of the king of terrors: "For to this end 
Christ both died and rose and revived, that 
he might be Lord both of the dead and liv- 
ing." Through death he gained the power to 
destroy him who had the power of death. 
His own resurrection proves his power to 
raise the dead, and is the standing pledge 
that, in the day of his second coming, he will 
deliver the bodies of men from death, as his 
own body was delivered, and their souls from 
Hades, as his own soul came back from the 
disembodied state. As surely, then, as death 
and Hades are affected by the resurrection, 
so surely will the soul and body share the 
rising. The resurrection is a miracle. It 
must be studied in the light of miracles, and 
not in the light of science. It depends on 



76 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

the power of God, and not on the laws of 
nature. The proof is in the living again of 
him who was dead, and who holds the keys 
of death and of Hades. 

The next passage is highly figurative. 
Both death and Hades are personified, but 
the association is kept up, and the natural 
order maintained: "And I looked, and be- 
hold a pale horse: and his name that sat on 
him was Death, and Hades followed with 
him." (Rev. vi, 8.) Death is a warrior, go- 
ing forth to conquest, and Hades is his insep- 
arable companion. This is true to fact. 
Death advances and strikes down the body, 
and Hades follows and receives the soul. 
Each has his work. This companionship is 
not merely rhetorical, nor is it accidental. It 
is one of the divinely ordered facts of reve- 
lation, standing as a guide to our inquiries in 
relation to the mysteries of our being and 
our destiny. 

We come now to the last instance of the 
use of this Avord in the Holy Scriptures, 
and the passage confirms all we have said, 
and gives emphasis to the thought that the 
resurrection destroys both death and Hades. 



HADES— SCRIPTURE USE. ^^ 

"And I saw a great white throne, and him 
that sat on it, from whose face the earth and 
heaven fled away; and there was found no 
place for them. And I saw the dead, small 
and great, stand before God; and the books 
were opened; and another book was opened, 
which is the book of life: and the dead were 
judged out of those things which Ave re writ- 
ten in the books, according to their works. 
And the sea gave up the dead which were 
in it; and death and Hades delivered up the 
dead which were in them : and they were 
judged every man according to their works. 
And death and Hades were cast into the lake 
of fire. This is the second death. And who- 
soever was not found written in the book of 
life was cast into the lake of fire." (Rev. 
xx, 11-15.) 

The first aim in studying this passage 
should be to fix its chronological relation. 
It marks the close of the Gospel dispensation. 
The seals have all been opened, the vials 
have all been poured out, the trumpets have 
all sounded; every symbol marking the epochs 
of time is past, and the end of the dispensa- 
tion is come. The symbolic thousand years 



78 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 



of Christ's reign is over. Satan has been 
imprisoned; he has again been loosed, and 
deceived the nations, and led them in their 
last conflict, and is now cast into his final 
doom, the lake of fire. It is the end of time, 
the end of probation, the end of the world. 
The passing away of heaven and earth is the 
last of this mundane sphere. It is the final 
conflagration when the elements melt with 
fervent heat. 

The next thing is to mark the order of 
events. The first is the appearance of the 
" great white throne." This is. the coming 
of the Lord in glory. The second is the de- 
livering up of the dead, which is the resurrec- 
tion. They come from all the receptacles 
of human dust, whether earth or sea. Death 
delivers up their bodies, and Hades delivers 
up their souls. This is the general resurrec- 
rection. Death retains no victim, and Hades 
retains no human soul. The third event is 
the judgment. This is the final revelation of 
the divine righteousness, the formal judicial an- 
nouncement of destiny. It reaches the entire 
race. From it there is no appeal. The last 
point is the execution of the sentence. All 



HADES— SCRIPTURE USE. 79 

the unsaved are cast into the lake of fire. 
This is "the second death.'' Death and 
Hades, having completed their reign over the 
bodies and souls of men, are abolished. The 
" second death" is not of this nature. So 
far as we know or can learn, it does not sep- 
arate soul and body. The beast, the false 
prophet, the devil, and all not written in the 
book of life, are cast into the lake of fire. 
This is the end. Naught remains but the 
final abode of the saved and lost. 

We have now seen the entire use of this 
word in the New Testament. The conclu- 
sion is inevitable. It means the disembodied 
state between death and the resurrection. It 
never applies to any state or condition be- 
yond the resurrection. When this fact is ap- 
prehended, the way is open for the study of 
the doctrine of future punishment on its 
merits. All classes agree that Hades does 
not last forever. It does not mean the place 
of eternal punishment. It is not the right 
word for Hell, according to the accepted 
sense of that word. Hence the destruction 
of Hades is not the destruction of Hell; the 
coming out of Hades is not salvation. The 



So NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

lake of fire is not in Hades, nor is it a symbol 
of Hades, nor does it in any wise represent the 
puishment that is found in Hades. The tran- 
sition from Hades to the ''lake of fire" is dis- 
tinctly noted. On the fact of that transition 
hinges the truth or falsity of the doctrine, in 
very large degree. But this fact itself does 
not depend on this single passage, positive as 
it is. The antecedent and accompanying facts 
which point to that transition are numerous 
and well sustained. The argument is cumu- 
lative and irrefragable. 

But, having found that Hades is the Scrip- 
tural term for the intermediate or disembod- 
ied state, without regard to locality or moral 
condition, and that it can have no substantial 
meaning unless the soul actually exists apart 
from the body, a chapter will be devoted to 
the consideration of the separate existence of 
the soul, as taught in the Scriptures, without 
the use of the word Hades which implies it. 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 8l 



Chapter V. 

THE SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 

IT seems impossible that any one endowed 
with the consciousness and sensibilities 
common to our race, and capable of observ- 
ing the developments of life incident to our 
history in this world and departure out of it, 
should live long without asking the question, 
"If a man die shall he live again?" But, 
while every one finds something within him- 
self prompting him to ask this question, no 
one, not aided by revelation, has been able 
to answer it satisfactorily to himself. The 
Bible alone has drawn aside the veil which 
separates eternity from time, so as to reveal 
to us the fact and the character of the exist- 
ence of the soul when dislodged from the 
earthly tabernacle. 

But even the Bible does not disclose the 
mode and surroundings of the life beyond in 
such a way as to meet all the requirements 



82 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

of curiosity. It does not tell us all about 
the nature of the separate life, the locality of 
the abode of the soul, and the pursuits and 
activities which pertain to it in the invisible 
world. Many questions arise touching these 
things which no man can answer, even with 
the helps of revelation at hand. The design 
of revelation is not to gratify curiosity, but 
to command our faith. In harmony with 
this design, " life and immortality are brought 
to light. " The momentous fact of life eternal 
as the gift of God through Jesus Christ, is 
set before us w 7 ith such impressiveness of lan- 
guage and imagery as to cut off excuse if we 
live in doubt. But, w 7 hile this is true in re- 
gard to the final state, there is comparatively 
little said of the particular period of the 
soul's existence between death and the resur- 
rection. And yet we are not left in utter 
darkness with reference to this point. The 
Scriptural idea of the soul's continued exist- 
ence, and the allusions, direct and indirect, 
to this period which we denominate the in- 
termediate state, are plain enough, when 
rightly considered, to assure us that death 
does not consign us to unconsciousness. 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 83 

It is proper here to glance at some pas- 
sages which relate to the continued existence 
of the soul, and which can not be otherwise 
construed without great violence: "And 
fear not them which kill the body, but are 
not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him 
which is able to destroy both soul and body 
in hell. " A parallel passage reads, "Be not 
afraid of them that kill the body, and after 
that have no more that they can do. But I 
will forewarn you whom ye shall fear. Fear 
him, which after he hath killed, hath power 
to cast into hell." The single point here 
to be noted is, that the soul is not "killed'' 
when the body is killed. This fact lies upon 
the surface of the passages, and will not be 
affected by the most critical prying into the 
profoundest depths of their meaning. Men 
may kill the body, but they can not kill the 
soul. This strikes away the foundation of 
materialistic conceptions of the soul, as de- 
pendent on the bodily organism, and clearly 
marks its survival of the shock that prostrates 
the body to the dust. If the passages mean 
any thing, they mean that the soul is not de- 
pendent on the body for its existence; that 



84 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

it is not identical with the body; that it is not 
a part of the body; that it does not die with 
the body ; and that, therefore, it is not of the 
nature of the body. Whatever it is, whatso- 
ever its attributes, its capabilities, its con- 
ditions of being, or its ultimate destiny, the 
dissolution of the body, which liberates it 
from its earthly connections, leaves its vitality 
untouched and its intrinsic energies unim- 
paired. With its bodily connection severed, 
it enters a new soul-life, a new state, where it 
finds new associations and new activities, all 
adapted to its needs, and all adjusted to the 
development of its spiritual life, and looking 
to the final glory awaiting it in the "manifes- 
tation of the sons of God." 

The criticisms of soul sleepers and de- 
structionists are not forgotten, but we fail to 
find any force in them. The fact that the 
word here rendered "soul is," in a few in- 
stances and other connections, rendered 
"life," proves nothing against its proper 
meaning in these passages. It is the proper 
word for soul, and is not the proper word for 
life, and it is only used in the sense of "life" 
in view of the fact that its connection with 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 85 

the body depends upon the life of the body. 
It is this life of the body with which the soul 
is contrasted; and one of the absurdities of 
all the reasoning of materialists on this point 
is seen in their continuous habit of confound- 
ing these two things which the Savior so 
sharply distinguished and so plainly con- 
trasted. The soul is not the life of the body, 
because the soul does not die, or is not de- 
stroyed when the body is killed. The life of 
the body is destroyed, but the soul is not. 

There are many facts mentioned in the 
Scriptures which are rich in suggestiveness 
at least on this subject. The transfiguration of 
Christ revealed the presence of Moses, who 
had been dead many hundreds of years. 
There is no intimation that he appeared in 
a glorified body, or that he had yet expe- 
rienced the resurrection of the dead; nor dare 
we imagine that the scene was merely phe- 
nomenal, deceiving the disciples by an optical 
illusion, in which phantoms played the part of 
historical personages. The testimony is too 
plain. Moses and Elias appeared talking 
with Jesus, and they talked about the decease 
of Jesus at Jerusalem. To the Sadducees, who 



86 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

denied the separate existence of the soul, 
as they did the existence of angels, Christ 
once said concerning Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob, "they live," although they had been 
so long dead. There is a sense in which 
these old Patriarchs were alive, while their 
bodies slumbered in the grave. We may say 
of them, as the apostle said of David, "They 
are dead and buried." "They are not as- 
cended into the heavens;" their resurrection 
is not yet accomplished; yet they "all live 
unto him." Their souls did not die with 
their bodies. 

And so the parable of the rich man and 
Lazarus, if it be a parable, represents Lazarus 
as living with Abraham, after he had died in 
poverty at the rich man's gate ; and it also 
represents the rich man as existing in the 
painful consciousness of torment, after he was 
dead and buried. But it is said that these 
are only appearances and representations, not 
realities. Let us be careful here. It matters 
nothing whether this Scripture be taken as a 
parable or a history, so far as its meaning is 
concerned ; but, whatever view w r e take, it 
must be conceded that Christ represented these 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 87 

men as continuing to exist after death. Now, 
that representation was either true or false. 
Men exist after death, or they do not. 
Christ represented them as existing. The 
people to whom the representation was made 
believed it true, and the Savior knew that 
they believed it true, and that if he did not 
correct their impressions they would be con- 
firmed in this belief; yet he did not attempt 
to controvert their prevailing thought, but 
made this representation of the state of the 
dead in good faith, and with the most im- 
pressive silence respecting any misapprehen- 
sion likely to arise in the minds of any who 
believed in the separate existence of the 
soul. What if this representation is parable? 
Christ's parables are not fables. He did not 
deal in fiction. Every parable he uttered 
was founded in fact. This point is worthy 
of particular note, especially as sometimes 
reference is made to the parables of our Lord 
to justify the use of fiction, as a suitable 
medium through which to communicate re- 
ligious truth. Whether it be right or wrong 
to use fiction, or whether it be possible to 
employ it to advantage or not, it can not be 



88 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

shown that Christ resorted to it. We must 
therefore conclude that when he represented 
the souls of men as in existence after death, 
he meant that we should believe that they do 
exist. He spoke of the existence of spirits 
"without flesh and bones," and of the con- 
tinued life of patriarchs and prophets, in such 
a way as to confirm the Pharisees, who be- 
lieved in these things, as against the Saddu- 
cees, who disbelieved them. 

We are unable to see any other way of 
interpreting our Lord's response to the appeal 
of the dying penitent, "To-day shalt thou be 
with me in paradise,'' than as teaching an 
immediate entrance of the soul into conscious 
rest. After studying what the critics have 
said about the punctuation of this text, and 
about Oriental customs, and the meaning of 
the word "paradise," our conviction remains 
undisturbed. Paul was caught up into "para- 
dise," and he spoke of it as the "third 
heaven," but he betrays no consciousness of 
the presence of his body, or of its participa- 
tion in the rapture of the soul. Indeed, he 
could not tell but that he was "out of the 
body" in that wonderful experience, which 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 89 

shows that he did not doubt the possibility 
of the disembodied existence. Christ entered 
paradise the day he was crucified, and the 
soul of the penitent entered " with him," 
without awaiting the coming of the Son of 
man in the clouds of heaven. 

In harmony with this view there is another 
fact of special significance. It is that when 
the Savior comes in the clouds with the 
angels, with the sound of the trumpet to 
raise the dead, the saints are to come with 
him. "When Christ, w 7 ho is our life, shall 
appear, then shall ye also appear with him in 
glory." "For if Ave believe that Christ died 
and rose again, even so them also which sleep 
in Jesus will God bring with him." During 
the intervening period they are "absent from 
the body and present with the Lord," and 
when he comes it will be " with all his saints," 
as well as with the angels. It can not be 
that they will then appear "with him" in 
full possession of their resurrection bodies ; 
for in this respect they are then to be "caught 
up," in company with those who are "alive 
and remain," "to meet the Lord in the air." 
They come with him, resume their rising 



go NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

bodies, and with the living, translated saints, 
are caught up to be forever with the Lord. 

This brings us to a passage bearing on the 
subject, and requiring careful study. It ex- 
tends from 2 Corinthians iv, 1 6, to the ninth 
verse of the chapter following — too long to 
transcribe here. Notwithstanding the division 
of chapters this is a single paragraph, and the 
key-note is struck in the opposite tendencies 
of the ''outward man" and the "inward 
man." Much has been said about the pecu- 
liar language here employed, but the result 
of the most critical scrutiny is, that the most 
obvious sense of the words is the true sense. 
The "outward man" is the body, and the 
"inward man" is the soul. The body is 
"perishing," gradually going down to death; 
but the soul is not perishing. The "inward" 
differs from the ''outward man" in nature, 
substance, and quality; it is not subject to 
the same laws of life, nor liable to the same 
fate in death. So opposite are these two na- 
tures, manifesting a veritable duality in each 
individual, that as one yields to the inevitable 
law of dissolution, the other becomes more 
and more vigorous, and shows itself possessed 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 91 

of additional powers yet to unfold, as it 
escapes the depressions and enthrallments of 
its connection with a nature tending to death. 
"For which cause we faint not; but though 
our outward man perish, yet the inward man 
is renewed day by day." Hence the apostle 
spoke of the afflictions of the body, even to 
dissolution, as being light and momentary. 
The soul survives them all, and enters the 
higher state scarcely conscious of the burden 
left behind, except as its participation in the 
afflictions of earth enhances its appreciation 
of the exceedingly abundant glory which is 
eternal. And this glory appears to the eye 
of faith while the burden is vet beini>* borne, 
and reveals itself with greater clearness and 
increasing value, as the "inward man" turns 
away from material things, which are tem- 
poral, and fixes its gaze upon the realities of 
the world to come. "The things which are 
not seen are eternal." And this approxima- 
tion of the soul to invisible things is not 
arrested by the dissolution of the "outward 
man." The whole tendency during the bodily 
life is in the opposite direction, and it can 
not be that the culmination of the temporary 



92 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

affliction will reverse the order of all pre- 
vious experience. " For we know that if out- 
earthly house of this tabernacle were dis- 
solved, we have a building of God, a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heav- 
ens." The "outward man" here becomes our 
"earthly house," distinguished from a per- 
manent home or dwelling place, and giving 
the character of a "tabernacle," so that the 
soul's stay on earth is merely a tent life. Its 
connection with this world is veiled and un- 
seen, and is preparatory to a higher life and 
an enduring residence in the spiritual state. 
In grasping the idea of this higher life, and 
giving it expression as uninterrupted by death, 
the apostle blends metaphors, recognizing the 
continued life of the soul, and yet reaching 
out in thought to the everlasting habitations 
beyond the resurrection. This involves some 
obscurity, and calls for careful observance of 
the scope of the argument. We must, there- 
fore, before becoming confused with this min- 
gling of metaphors, note the emphatic point 
in the statement. It is that which indicates 
the time when the soul is to have the dwell- 
ing place which is not the "earthly house of 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 93 

this tabernacle." Whatever the ''building of 
God" may mean in its ultimate signification, 
it is to receive the soul, and become the 
house or dwelling-place of the " inward man " 
during the time the ''outward man," the 
body or "tabernacle," is lying in the dust of 
death. The earthly house will dissolve, and 
then the building of God will be occupied. 
It is well, also, to observe the leading points 
of contrast in this language. It is not the 
perishing body with the resurrection body, 
but the temporary residence of the soul on 
earth with its permanent abode in heaven. 
This puts the whole future existence in oppo- 
sition to the brief life in this world, making 
the contrast more striking and impressive 
than a mere antithetic comparison of the nat- 
ural and the spiritual body. And the fact 
that the final glory of the redeemed is brought 
into the account, does not necessarily imply 
that its fullest development will be found in 
the first experiences of the soul after leaving 
the body; for the idea of a progressive devel- 
opment is by no means incompatible with 
Scriptural thoughts and figures, and is not 
excluded by the metaphors here introduced. 



94 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

The great fact postulated with emphasis is, 
that in passing- out of the dying body, the 
conscious selfhood, the "inward man," en- 
ters upon a career of everlasting enjoyment, 
which beginning, as it does, in a disembodied 
state, continues its approach to the infinite 
source of blessedness, until the redemption 
of the body itself is accomplished. The 
groaning in this tabernacle is easily under- 
stood, but the use of the words "clothed" 
and "unclothed" induces a slight obscurity. 
The building of God, the house not made 
with hands, appears to become at once the 
dwelling place and the clothing of the soul. 
It supplies the place of the body, and of the 
dwelling place of the body. In the truest 
sense it becomes the "home of the soul" — 
"the house from heaven," or of heavenly na- 
ture and origin. The language, confessedly 
obscure, may, without violence, imply an in- 
vestiture of the soul with some spiritual form 
and vehicle, which shall ultimately take upon 
itself the resurrection body, and make the 
connecting link between the undying nature 
and that which out of corruption shall put on 
immortality. The life on earth is a mystery, 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 95 

and the life in heaven is not less mysterious. 
But there is no obscurity in this language 
that needs hinder us in gathering the force 
of the argument. The fact is plain that the 
' 'inward man," which does not perish with 
the "outward man," enters at once the build- 
ing of God ; it rises from earth to heaven, 
and begins its eternal life; but this is not all 
that was in the apostle's thought. He saw 
in that house not made with hands all need- 
ful provision for the permanent home, and 
while groaning in this earthly tabernacle, and 
contemplating the coming blessedness, he 
longed first to be disembodied and then to be 
finally established in the home of the re- 
deemed, where "mortality is swallowed up 
of life" — an expression which looks to the 
ultimate deliverance of the body from the 
dominion of death. 

After this allusion to the ultimate triumph, 
the apostle comes back to the leading thought 
of immediate union with Christ, when death 
occurs. "Therefore," in view of all the pro- 
visions for the soul, when done with earth, 
" we are always confident, knowing that whilst 
we are at home in the body we are absent 



g6 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

from the Lord (for we walk by faith, not by- 
sight) ; we are confident, I say, and willing 
rather to be absent from the body, and to be 
present with the Lord." In the thought of 
the apostle there is a conscious selfhood which 
is distinguishable from the body, which now 
lives in the body, but neither blends with it 
nor depends upon it so as to be incapable of 
another life, and which is not destined to 
share all the experiences of the physical na- 
ture. This interior selfhood g'rows stronger 
while the body grows weaker; it departs from 
the body in death, but does not die ; and 
when the body falls into dust, it returns to 
God who gave it. It is then ''absent from 
the body," yet still living, being " present 
with the Lord." It was in view of this con- 
tinued life of the proper person, that our 
Savior said, "If any man keep my saying he 
shall never see death." The separate life 
of the soul is thus plainly revealed, and ap- 
pears so positively interwoven with these 
Scriptures that we can not explain them with 
consistency or satisfaction without taking this 
doctrine as an established truth. And to be 
"present with the Lord" means more than 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 97 

to lose connection with earth. Paul saw in 
it something desirable, something far better 
than to live in the body, and spoke as if 
anxious for the consummation: "For I am 
in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to de- 
part and to be with Christ, which is far bet- 
ter." This can mean nothing less than con- 
scious communion with Christ. Whether the 
selfhood that departs from the body finds pre- 
pared for it a special vehicle in which to live, 
or whether the soul itself forms a spiritual 
vestment for the conscious self and divine life 
within it, or whether the soul, including all the 
qualities and characteristics of the spiritual na- 
ture remains "unclothed" till the period of 
the resurrection of the dead, we may not posi- 
tively affirm ; but that the departed saint lives 
with Christ, where Christ is, and in joyful fel- 
lowship with him, is the plain sense of this 
passage, and agrees with the whole tenor 
of the apostolic writings. "Wherefore we 
labor, that whether present or absent, we may 
be accepted of him." 

The scene which John describes in the 
Revelation, wherein appeared the company of 
the redeemed from earth, consisting of the 

7 



98 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

one hundred and forty-four thousand of the 
tribes of Israel, and the innumerable multitude 
from all nations, clad in white robes and palms 
in their hands, is sufficient of itself to settle 
the question in hand, and can not be explained 
in harmony with any hypothesis that denies 
the soul an existence separate from the body. 
This scene is located* in heaven, in the pres- 
ence of the throne of God and of the angels, 
where the multitude clothed in white robes 
lead the devotions, while the angels respond ; 
but they were not yet in the resurrection 
state. There were no crowns upon their 
heads. These will be bestowed in the day of 
Christ's coming to raise the dead, after the 
opening of the seventh seal; but this appear- 
ance was before the last seal was opened. 
In another vision John saw ''the souls of 
them that were beheaded for the testimony 
of Jesus," and described them as under the 
altar, waiting in hope of a grand consumma- 
tion yet in the future, which points to the 
resurrection of the dead and the retribution 
that follows. In both visions the happiness 
of the saints in the separate state is declared. 
The next chapter will consider the ques- 



SEPARATE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL. 99 

tion of suffering in the separate state — in 
Hades — and the interpretation which Univer- 
salists and other "liberalists" put upon the 
parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which, 
as we have seen, discloses the condition of the 
departed, and reveals conscious being and 
actual suffering after death. 



ioo NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 



Chapter VI. 

SUFFERING IN HADES. 

HADES is the separate state of souls. 
It is the unseen world. Men die in 
all conditions. Some die in their sins. Do 
they suffer after death? We propose to an- 
swer this question by studying and applying 
that remarkable passage of Scripture in Luke 
xvi, 19-31, which is sometimes called the 
parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and 
which, for our present purpose, we shall re- 
gard as a parable. 

The question sometimes raised as to 
whether this is parable or history is unim- 
portant, for the reason that all our Savior's 
parables are founded on fact or are true to 
fact. This distinguishes them from fables, 
and gives their lessons a certainty and force 
that fables could not give. It is fact that 
sowers go forth to sow; that tares grow with 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 101 

the wheat; that fishermen gather the good 
and bad into their nets; that the mustard- 
seed grows to be a large herb; that leaven 
leavens the meal ; and it is fact that both rich 
and poor men die — that both the righteous 
and the wicked enter the unseen state. Then, 
whether it be true or false that a particular 
rich man died, and was buried, and lifted 
up his eyes in Hades, in torment, one thing 
is certain — Christ represented this state of 
things. Did he represent a state of things as 
true which is not true? Did he adopt a false- 
hood and make it into a parable? This is 
incredible; and yet if the representation of 
the rich man in Hades, in torment after death, 
does not set forth what actually occurs, it 
must follow that the chief feature of this par- 
able is a false representation of the state of 
things after death. 

We agree to call this Scripture a parable; 
but it is neither fable nor falsehood. It 
represents truth. And, taken in its most 
obvious sense, it represents, and, therefore, 
teaches, that there is suffering in Hades. 
This is the great fact in the present argument. 

But we wish to see what Universalists 



102 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

have to say in regard to this parable. Ad- 
mitting, as they mostly do, that the wicked 
suffer after death, there is no necessity for 
their denying the interpretation given above; 
but they do deny it, and courageously assert 
a different one. They do not always agree 
in their expositions, but in the interpreta- 
tion of this parable there is such general con- 
currence that we safely treat it as the Uni- 
versalist interpretation. In presenting it I 
select the words of Rev. J. M. Austin, in his 
debate with Dr. Holmes — page 627 — for the 
reason that he is good authority with his 
class, and he presents the matter in the clear- 
est and most concise manner possible. His 
language is, "What is to be understood by 
this parable? Let me answer briefly: 1. By 
the rich man, the Savior represents the Jews, 
especially the priests. 2. By the beggar, he 
represents the Gentile world. 3. By the 
death of the two personages, he describes 
the change in the circumstances of both the 
Jews and Gentiles, which took place at the 
introduction of the Gospel dispensation. 4. 
The rich man in Hell (Hades) represents the 
wretched condition of the Jews when God 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 103 

had placed them aside as his chosen people. 
5. The beggar in Abraham's bosom indi- 
cates the entrance of the Gentiles into the 
Gospel kingdom which the Redeemer estab- 
lished on earth. 6. The great gulf signifies 
the unbelief of the Jews in the Redeemer, 
whereby they have been kept in their un- 
happy state of alienation unto this day." 
This application might be carried farther in 
regard to several minor points, but time will 
not allow." These " minor points," if car- 
ried out, as we learn elsewhere, would teach 
that the " sores" on the beggar represent 
the moral diseases of the Gentiles; that the 
"dogs" are pagan philosophers, Socrates, 
Plato, Aristotle, et al; that ''licking the sores" 
represents the efforts of these philosophers to 
cure the moral maladies of the people; that 
the "angels" are Gospel ministers; that car- 
rying Lazarus into Abraham's bosom, means 
the ministers conducting Gentiles into the 
fellowship of Abraham's faith; and that the 
"five brethren" represent — well, sometimes 
the body of the Jewish people, sometimes 
the Jews scattered beyond Judea, or what- 
ever will best suit the occasion. 



104 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Now passing these "minor points/' the 
extent to which this interpretation has been 
accepted, the influence it exerts, and the fact 
that so little is usually done in the way of 
exposing these false interpretations of impor- 
tant passages, will justify us in taking time 
to look at these six items consecutively, and 
testing their value. 

I. Is it true that "by the rich man the 
Savior represents the Jews, especially the 
priests?" If so, all that is said of the rich 
man must be true of the Jews. It might be 
said of some of them that they fared sump- 
tuously, for they were rich ; but this can not 
be taken as descriptive of the Jews any more 
than of the nations around them. Nor can 
this, with" the allusion to their dress, be ap- 
plied to the priests as distinguished from the 
people ; for the priests had no ecclesiastical 
or political life, apart from the people, that 
would warrant such language concerning 
them. They did not constitue the nation. 
With them the "purple and fine linen" 
were not the only distinguishing articles of 
official dress. Gold, blue, scarlet, and pre- 
cious stones were equally important and con- 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 105 

spicuous. And if we admit that the allusion 
was to the dress of the priests, we are still 
at a loss to know what the clothing rep- 
resents in the parable. If it represents 
spiritual privileges, what does the sumptuous 
feasting represent? If worldly prosperity, 
when was it enjoyed? If national greatness, 
when were the Jews so great that neighbor- 
ing nations, the Romans for instance, were 
''beggars" in comparison with them. The 
Jews, as a nation, acknowledged Abraham as 
their "father," but this rich man had another 
" father," for he said, in the parable, address- 
ing Abraham, "I pray thee, father, that thou 
wouldst send him to my fathers house." 
Who besides Abraham did the Jews call 
"father?" The rich man, after death, ap- 
pealed to Abraham for help by the ministry 
of the be^o*ar ; but when, and in what sense, 
did the Jews appeal to Abraham to send 
Lazarus to their relief, after the change 
in circumstances supposed to be denoted 
by the death of these personages? The rich 
man had "five brethren," and if he represents 
a nation so ought they to represent nations; 
but what five nations could they represent? 



106 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

These brethren had Moses and the prophets, 
that is, the Old Testament Scriptures; but 
what five nations, besides the Jews, had the 
Sacred Writings? 

Many attempts have been made to tell 
what or whom these "five brethren" repre- 
sent in the parable. Some say the) 7 represent 
the Jews scattered abroad, who carried the 
writings of Moses and the prophets with 
them. But the Jews scattered abroad were 
not separate nations. They were Jews still, 
and had no political or ecclesiastical existence 
apart from the Jews in Palestine; nor was 
there any thing in their condition or circum- 
stances requiring the number "five" to des- 
ignate them. And what is fatal to this hy- 
pothesis is the fact that the "five brethren" 
were yet at home, in their "father's house," 
after the rich man was in "torment." This 
does not answer to the condition of the dis- 
persed Jews, scattered among the nations. 
And, further, the " torment" of the rich man 
is supposed to consist largely of the disper- 
sion of the Jews; and if so, the "brethren" 
were in it first. And then the rich man de- 
sired his brethern to repent, "lest they also 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 107 

come into this place of torment." But when 
did the Jews, or even the priests, desire that 
the scattered Jews might repent, in order that 
they might escape dispersion? 

But we are sometimes told that the rich 
man represents the priesthood, and the 
"five brethren" the body of the Jewish 
people. This is not less absurd than what we 
have just considered. If the rich man rep- 
resented a priesthood, the brethren should 
do the same ; but there were no other five 
priesthoods. Besides this, the priesthood of 
the Jews had no national or political existence 
apart from the body of the people, and con- 
sequently it could not die a political death to 
be represented by the death of the rich man 
in the parable. And, further, the rich man 
was dead, buried, and in torment before his 
brethren were dead; for they were yet alive, 
and in his father's house, and supposed to be 
in reach of repentance, when he implored 
Abraham to send Lazarus to them. But the 
Jewish priesthood was not ecclesiastically or 
politically dead, before the body of the Jew- 
ish people experienced a like calamity. Nor 
did the Jewish priests, so far as is known, 



108 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

ever express any desire that the body of 
the people should repent, especially of the 
sin of rejecting the Messiah which brought 
their woe upon them — much less that Laz- 
arus, the Gentile world, should be sent to 
induce them to repent — lest they also should 
come into the same unhappy condition with 
themselves. But this is enough to show the 
absurdity of the statement that " by the rich 
man the Savior represented the Jews, espe- 
cially the priests." 

"2. By the beggar he represents the Gen- 
tile world." Is this true? If so all that 
is said in the parable about Lazarus, must 
in some way apply to the Gentile world. 
The spiritual poverty and helplessness of the 
Gentiles might be fitly enough represented 
by a beggar, clothed in rags and covered 
with sores ; but, then, the relation to the 
rich man, in which the beggar is placed in 
the parable, fails utterly to represent the re- 
lation of the Gentiles to the Jews. The 
Gentiles never besought the Jews to relieve 
their spiritual necessities. The begging of 
Lazarus at the rich man's gate finds no par- 
allel in the history of the nations, and cer- 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 109 

tainly not in the relation of the Gentiles to 
the Jews. The Gentiles were not aware of 
their spiritual poverty, and if they had been 
oppressed with the consciousness of their 
destitution, they would not have gone to the 
Jews or the Jewish priests for relief. There is 
no sense in which they desired to be fed with 
the crumbs which fell from the Jewish table. 
It is claimed that the death of the rich 
man represents the political death of the 
Jews. Mr. Austin expresses himself cau- 
tiously, calling it a "change of circumstan- 
ces;" but this is what is meant, as we learn 
from his other writings as well as from other 
authors of the same school. But if so, the 
death of Lazarus must represent a political 
death likewise. Then, whose political death 
could it represent? The Gentile world died no 
political death. The death of Lazarus bettered 
his condition ; but political death to the na- 
tions is not usually looked upon as a blessing. 
New political life may be gained after a po- 
litical death which will be better than the 
old, but this is not the necessary nor the 
ordinary result. We seek in vain through 
all the history of the nations for any event to 



HO NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

correspond with the subversion of the Jewish 
polity, or to be called a political death on 
the part of the Gentiles. But the rich man 
and Lazarus both died, the one as certainly 
as the other, and it will not do to assume 
that one represented a political death, and the 
other some other kind of death. This is not 
allowable, and if it were, the other kind of 
death, in the Gentile world, is not discover- 
able. It was not a moral death, for the 
Gentiles were morally dead before, and moral 
death does not improve the condition of in- 
dividuals or nations. It was not a " death 
unto sin," for the Gentiles did not die unto 
sin. Individuals among Jews and Gentiles 
"died unto sin," as they believed on Christ, 
but this personal experience does not answer 
to the death of the beggar in any intelligible 
sense. The event of death is not a suitable 
figure with which to represent a change of 
circumstances in individuals or nations, which 
is to result in the bettering of the condition 
of the subject of it, unless the nature of the 
change is so distinctly marked as to preclude 
the possibility of mistake in regard to it. 
The rich man's prayer, in this parable, 



SUFFERING IN HADES. ill 

disproves the assumption that the beggar rep- 
resented the Gentile world. "Send Lazarus 
that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, 
and cool my tongue." Did Christ represent 
him as requesting that the Gentile world might 
be sent to his relief? Did the Jews ever 
pray for the mitigation of their sufferings 
through the ministration of the Gentiles? 
"Send him to my father's house, for I have 
five brethren, that he may testify unto them," 
Who can believe that the Jewish nation, or 
priesthood, is here represented as asking 
Abraham to send the Gentiles to relieve its 
own suffering, and to warn its brethren? But 
it mav be said that this figurative language 
denotes the anxiety of the Jews, after their 
dispersion, to obtain the doctrines of the 
Gospel, then in possession of the Gentiles. 
Then why was the prayer addressed to Abra- 
ham ? and why has this anxiety of the Jews 
to receive the Gospel at the hands of the 
Gentiles never been discovered? And since 
those who have the Gospel are always ready 
to impart it to others, why was this request 
denied? The truth is the Jews have never 
sought to mitigate their sufferings by the 



112 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

consolations of the Gospel since their disper- 
sion, any more than the Gentiles previously 
desired to be fed on the crumbs of Judaism. 
This explanation of the chief characters of 
this parable is, therefore, a failure. It is 
without foundation in fact, reason, or anal- 
ogy, and is unsupported by any authority, 
and must be abandoned as a vain invention, 
devised for the support of a distressed theory. 
"3. By the death of the two personages, 
he describes the change in the circumstances 
of both the Jews and Gentiles, which took 
place at the introduction of the Gospel dispen- 
sation." This is indefinite, not to say ambigu- 
ous. Nevertheless we can learn its import 
with a little effort. This author is also the 
author of the " Universalist Catechism on the 
Parables;" and from the catechism, and from 
the writings of others of the same faith, we 
find that the meaning is, that the Jewish 
nation died politically, while the Gentiles 
died unto sin — making the death of the rich 
man signify a national event, and that of the 
beggar represent what is purely a matter of 
individual experience! But where is the au- 
thority for interpreting these deaths in this 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 1 13 

way? We ask in vain. The interpretation 
is arbitrary, forced, unnatural, inharmonious, 
impossible. If one death was a national 
event, so was the other; and if one was a 
death unto sin, so was the other. Both died 
the same kind of death, however changed 
their circumstances after death. But both 
could not have been national political deaths, 
for there was no political death in the Gen- 
tile world to be represented by the death of 
Lazarus. Nor could both have been a death 
unto sin ; for the Jews did not die unto sin. 
Besides, Lazarus died first, and if his death 
signified the conversion of the Gentiles, they 
should have been converted before the Jews 
died politically; but they were not. Both 
died suddenly; but the change in the circum- 
stances of the Jews and Gentiles did not take 
place suddenly, but after long preparation, 
and after a long struggle, and after having 
been the subject of prophecy for many years. 
The facts are all against this interpretation. 

The angels carried Lazarus into Abraham's 
bosom. This means something. Mr. Austin 
says, "This is an allusion to the angels, mes- 
sengers, or preachers of the Gospel, by whom 

8 



114 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL, 

the Gentiles were brought into the belief of 
the same promises and faith in Christ with 
which Abraham was blessed." (Catechism, 
p. 128.) But we have no evidence that the 
phrase "Abraham's bosom" was ever under- 
stood among the Jews as signifying Church 
privileges or faith in Christ. On the con- 
trary, the Jews used it for a different purpose, 
and always with reference to the happiness 
of the souls of the righteous after death. 
Hence the Babylonish Talmud, "Holy men 
did all they could to detain Rabbi Judah here, 
but angels carried him to heaven ; now he sits 
in Abraham's bosom/' 

The Jews also believed in the existence 
of angels; that is, the great mass of the Jew- 
ish people did, for the skepticism of the Sad- 
ducees affected the popular mind but slightly; 
and hence, without notice of a different use 
of the word, they would understand this term 
as relating to heavenly intelligences, in whose 
existence and ministrations they had unques- 
tioning faith. The disciples themselves were 
not angels, nor did they become angels when 
they became apostles. In a few instances 
this word is applied, figuratively, to the min- 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 115 

isters in the Church, but so as not to mislead 
or become a personal appellation. It was 
impossible, when this parable was spoken, 
that the disciples should apply this part of it 
to themselves; and it is certain that the first 
Christians never interpreted these words in 
any such sense as that we are considering. 
If the angels carrying Lazarus into Abraham's 
bosom after death represented Gospel minis- 
ters conducting Gentiles into the faith of 
Abraham, is it not strange that the rich man 
saw him in that place of comfort so soon 
after his own death, when such large portions 
of the Gentiles remain to this day destitute 
of the knowledge of Christ and the faith of 
Abraham ? 

Again, it appears that one going from 
Abraham, where Lazarus was, to the rich 
man's father's house, was such an event as 
could be described as one rising from the 
dead. But if the Church should send mis- 
sionaries to preach the Gospel to the Jews, 
or to any people represented by the "five 
brethren," the appearance of such mission- 
aries could not be called a resurrection 
from the dead, without the severest strain 



Il6 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

upon the language, and inexcusable obscurity. 
And at this point our author overleaps him- 
self, and yields the whole ground, though in- 
advertently, by illustrating this language by 
the rising again of the other Lazarus and by 
the resurrection of Christ himself, both of 
which were literal resurrections. If one go- 
ing from the state Lazarus was in, to the 
"five brethren," was a rising from the dead, 
illustrated by the resurrection of Christ or 
by the calling of the other Lazarus out of his 
grave, it is simply absurd to think of the 
death of Lazarus as any thing other than a 
literal death. But if this rising from the 
dead, in the parable, be not fitly illustrated 
by these literal examples, we still inquire as 
to its meaning, and receive no answer. Upon 
this point our "liberal" expositors are as 
silent as the grave. 

"4. The rich man in Hell {Hades) repre- 
sents the wretched condition of the Jews, 
when God had placed them aside as his 
chosen people." As the meaning of the 
word Hades is not the point in question just 
now, we shall not dwell on that, but try to 
weigh the proposition that applies the term, 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 117 

figuratively, to the "wretched condition of 
the Jews" in this world. If there were noth- 
ing- like wretchedness in the literal Hades, it 
could not be used very well as a figure of 
wretchedness here. If there were no degra- 
dation there, — if all were silent unconscious- 
ness, as some hold, or if all were peace and 
happiness, as others claim, — it would not, as 
a metaphor or simile, present a very dark 
picture of degradation and wretchedness, to 
represent the results of sin in this life. 

Mr. Austin elsewhere says, "that in rep- 
resenting the rich man as being tormented in 
Hades, Jesus but repeated the popular notions 
of that age in regard to the condition of the 
wicked in the invisible world." (Catechism 
p. 135.) This is a concession of tremendous 
import, but it was not an inadvertence. It 
is a fact which an intelligent Universalist 
would not attempt to deny. Upon this same 
point, the Rev. I. D. Williamson, D. D,— 
than whom there is no better Universalist 
authority, — uses the following language : 
''Around him [Christ] were the mammon- 
worshiping Pharisees, glorying in their wealth 
and despising the poor, clinging to the law, 



U-8 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

and rejecting the Gospel, notwithstanding 
they saw it attested with signs and miracles 
before their eyes. They believed that in 
Hades, or 'Hell' as it is translated in the 
text, there were two apartments — one for the 
righteous and one for the wicked — and made 
no doubt that they should dwell with Abra- 
ham in bliss, while the poor and the despised, 
the publicans and the sinners, would be cast 
out and made to dwell in torments. Our 
Savior fitted his discourse to his hearers; he 
founded his parable precisely upon their 
views, and in the end taught them that, by 
their own showing, instead of being above 
others, they were worse than those they de- 
spised." (Lectures, p. 182.) 

There can be no doubt that the Jews be- 
lieved in "torment," in Hades, after death. 
The intelligent of all classes, and of all grades 
of "liberalistic" thought, agree to this. But 
could our Savior, in the presence of this gen- 
eral sentiment, "repeat the popular notions 
of that age," and "found his parable pre- 
cisely" upon the views of the people ad- 
dressed, without impressing them that he ap- 
proved the "popular notion" in regard to 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 1 19 

the condition of the wicked in the invisible 
world? Would he "repeat the popular no- 
tions of the age," and found a parable upon 
them, and leave them uncontradicted, if his 
purpose was to disapprove those notions,, 
and to teach a different doctrine by apply- 
ing the language to something in this world 
which they were accustomed to apply only 
to the state of the dead? The supposition 
that he would is preposterous. The very 
fact, so fully admitted, that he repeated the 
popular notions of the people, proves unan- 
swerably that he did not speak of torment 
in Hades after death for the purpose of rep- 
resenting the "wretched condition of the 
Jews" in this world. Neither the Jews in 
general, nor his own disciples, could have 
understood him if he intended any such 
thing. If he intended to be understood, he 
must have regarded the popular opinions of 
the Jews as sufficiently correct to receive this 
mark of approval. As an honest man, he 
could not allude to the popular notions pre- 
vailing all around him, and use them uncon- 
tradicted, for any purpose whatever, if they 
were erroneous. If the popular notion on 



120 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

this subject was wrong, his business was to 
correct it, which he never did. 

"5. The beggar in Abraham's bosom in- 
dicates the entrance of the Gentiles into the 
Gospel kingdom, which the Redeemer estab- 
lished on earth." But the Gentiles have not 
all entered the Gospel kingdom. Multitudes 
of them remain in the darkness of heathen- 
ism. Their conversion is not accomplished 
suddenly and easily, like the angels carrying 
a soul to paradise, but slowly, and with much 
labor and patient waiting, they are to be 
brought under the influence of the Gospel of 
Christ. And the Gospel kingdom has never 
been called "Abraham's bosom." This phrase 
was familiar to the Jews, and bore a different 
meaning, as we have seen. This new appli- 
cation of it is without precedent or authority, 
and is contrary to established usage. More- 
over, if the "angels" are Gospel ministers, 
as is claimed, they have as much right to 
carry the Jews as the Gentiles into the Gos- 
pel kingdom. They are ready to perform 
this gracious office for any and all classes 
alike. They were commissioned to "preach 
the Gospel to every creature," and were 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 121 

directed to open their ministry at home 
among the Jews, "beginning at Jerusalem. " 
The Gospel is the power of God unto salva- 
tion to every one that believeth, "to the Jew 
first, and also to the Greek." And, finally 
on this point, the rich man acknowledged that 
Lazarus was in "Abraham's bosom," and 
sought relief at his hands; but the Jews have 
never acknowledged the Gentiles to be in 
possession of the true faith and blessing of 
Abraham, nor sought spiritual comfort at 
the hands of Gentile Christians. 

"6. The great gulf signifies the unbelief 
of the Jews in the Redeemer, whereby they 
have been kept in their unhappy state of 
alienation unto this day." This is unfounded 
assertion. The gulf was "fixed" between 
the parties. It was appointed and established 
by divine ordination. The unbelief of the 
Jews was sufficiently stubborn, and in that 
sense "fixed," but it was not appointed nor 
ordained of God. It was not the product of 
divine power. On the contrary, they were 
guilty of their own unbelief. They were 
favored with evidences enough to convince 
them of the Messiahs!) ip of Jesus, but they 



122 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

shut their eyes to the light. They "fixed" 
their own unbelief, but "father Abraham" 
did not intimate to the rich man that he had 
fixed the gulf himself. It was his fault that 
he was on the wrong side of it, but the gulf 
was there without his agency. 

And this "gulf" could not be crossed. 
The separation between the parties was final. 
Think of this, ye who imagine probation in 
Hades! But the unbelief of the Jews in this 
life was not necessarily so permanent as this 
gulf. However terrible their blindness and 
inveterate their prejudice's, the removal of the 
unbelief of living Jews has never been rated 
an impossibility. The first converts to Chris- 
tianity were from the Jews, and in the early 
age of the Church many thousands of that 
people embraced the Gospel ; and in every 
period of the Church's history some portions 
of this wonderful people have yielded to the 
power of truth, and found redemption in 
Jesus Christ. There has always been "a 
remnant according to the election of grace." 
Every instance of the conversion of a Jew is 
a contradiction to this interpretation of the 
"great gulf." And these contradictions will 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 123 

go on ; for if the prophecies may be accepted 
as trustworthy, the Jews will yet, as a race, 
give up their unbelief, embrace the Gospel, 
and share the blessings of the Redeemer's 
kingdom. The middle wall between the Jews 
and Gentiles has been broken down. All 
distinctions on account of nationality have 
been destroyed, so that sinners of all nations 
stand on the same ground with respect to the 
provisions of the Gospel and the terms of sal- 
vation. "For there is no difference between 
Jew and Greek; for the same Lord over all 
is rich unto all that call upon him." 

It is, therefore, evident that God's rejection 
of the Jews from his covenant through unbe- 
lief, by which they were set aside from being 
his peculiar people "fixed" no impassable 
gulf between them and the Church of Christ 
on earth. They were broken off from the 
good olive-tree by their unbelief, but God is 
able to graft them in again, and when the 
blindness which happened to them shall pass 
away, their conversion will prove to be the 
crowning achievement of the Gospel on earth. 

This "gulf" is so important a feature of 
this parable that we ought to be sure of our 



124 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 



ground with respect to it, because of its bear- 
ing on the general subject in hand, independ- 
ently of the interpretation we have been 
considering. Whatever its nature or import, 
the "gulf" is represented as being " fixed" 
between parties that were dead. Abraham, 
who appears in this connection, had been 
dead, literally, for hundreds of years ; Laz- 
arus had died and been carried by angels into 
Abraham's bosom ; the rich man also had 
died and had been buried before the gulf 
appears. The fact that Abraham was a real 
person, and was literally dead, is not ques- 
tioned. Nor is it denied that Lazarus is rep- 
resented as being with him, and therefore 
dead in the same sense, and enjoying the 
comforts of the same spiritual state that 
Abraham was enjoying. No one can question 
that the representation is of the state of the 
dead. Abraham, who was dead, was on one 
side of the "gulf" with Lazarus, who had 
died, in his bosom, or in intimate fellowship 
with him ; and the rich man, who had also died 
and been buried, was on the other side of it. 
The gulf was, therefore, between the dead ; 
and if no such separation between the dead 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 125 

actually exists in the invisible world, the rep- 
resentation is misleading, and the parable is 
based on falsehood ! No matter what appli- 
cation be made of the parable to things in 
this world, or how the "gulf" be metaphor- 
ically used with reference to unbelief or any 
thing else, if the state of the dead be not as 
represented, the whole thing is worse than 
fiction and utterly meaningless. 

To allege that this representation of the 
state of the dead is fiction, is to rob it of the 
dignity of a parable and reduce it to the 
grade of an ill-contrived riddle. The parables 
of our Lord were not enigmatical representa- 
tions of things that existed only in the fancy, 
calculated to bewilder and confound his hear- 
ers, but they were pointed narrations of fact, 
designed to illustrate truth, and to impress 
the understanding and the conscience. They 
were adapted to his hearers, the Jews, who 
knew nothing of the far-fetched ideas the 
modern " liberalists " seek to fasten on this 
one, and who could not possibly have under- 
stood any thing of his meaning, neither they 
nor his own disciples, if the modern interpre- 
tation is correct, nor did any one succeed in 



126 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

guessing it for the period of eighteen hundred 
years. And in this parable, which is not 
fiction, Christ represented a state of suffering 
or "torment" in Hades. This no man calls 
in question, who believes or interprets the 
Holy Scriptures. And upon this idea of suf- 
fering in Hades, which his hearers believed to 
be the truth, he founded his parable. So say 
the most distinguished opposers of the doc- 
trine of eternal punishment, as well as the 
learned of all classes. Then how is it possible 
to avoid the conclusion that he meant to sanc- 
tion the doctrine of punishment in Hades? 
The Jews believed in future and eternal 
punishment to the wicked, and nothing short 
of a positive declaration to the contrary would 
prevent them from understanding this parable 
as confirming their faith. They believed that 
the righteous, at death, were taken to a place 
of rest, which they called Abraham's bosom; 
and that the wicked, at death, entered Hades, 
where they were "tormented" till the judg- 
ment. Addressing men who believed all this, 
the Savior delivered this parable for the pur- 
pose of reproving the sin of covetousness. 
He taught them herein that wealth would 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 127 

not secure the favor of God ; that worldly 
prosperity was no mark of the divine ap- 
proval; but that the richest of them might 
perish and suffer all the torment of the lost in 
the invisible world in spite of their abun- 
dance. The illustration was striking, easily 
comprehended, and easily applied, and the 
lesson worthy the teacher and the occasion. 
Having just taught them by another parable 
that they could not serve God and mammon ; 
that their possessions were not their own ; 
that they were only stewards of the good 
things of this life, and must give account of 
their stewardship, he now carried their minds 
to the future, to see the outcome of a life 
of sinful indulgence, as contrasted with that 
of a virtuous life of poverty and suffering. 
The rich man was described as luxuriating in 
all the world could give, and the poor man as 
reaching the lowest point of humiliation and 
want. Then both die, and the scene is 
changed. The rich man from his palace sank 
down to torment, and the beggar left his rags 
and ascended to honor and bliss. Then how 
vain are riches ! How foolish and wicked 
the sin of covetousness ! 



128 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Just here our "liberal" friends resort 
to ridicule, making themselves merry over 
what they call the absurdities of our "lit- 
eral interpretations." They play on the 
words "bosom," "eyes," "tongue," "gulf," 
" flames," representing that we are obliged to 
take every word in its literal sense, if we 
apply the parable to the state of the dead 
literally. In this they misapprehend the 
facts, and spend their strength on false issues. 
The language is figurative, and we treat it 
accordingly, only insisting that correct rules 
of interpretation be applied to it. Of neces- 
sity words relating to material things must 
be used metaphorically when applied to the 
spiritual state. The fact of suffering after 
death in Hades is clearly taught, though its 
nature is not explained. The "bosom," the 
"eyes," and the "tongue" are metaphors, 
undoubtedly; but the "comfort" is real, on 
the one hand, and the "torment," on the 
other. We may infer that the suffering is 
not corporeal, in the absence of the body, but 
we need not attempt to comprehend it or try 
to measure its intensity. Spiritual though it 
be, it is represented as torment, and the word 



SUFFERING IN HADES. 129 

Si flames" misleads no one. No doubt it 
involves the consciousness of forfeited good, 
and that self-reproach and remorse are ele- 
ments in the cup of woe. 

And here we meet such questions as the 
following, supposed to indicate difficulties : 
"Is hell so near to heaven as this? Must 
the saints in heaven forever hear the wails 
and groans, the cursings and blasphemings, 
of the lost? Must they witness the agonies 
and listen to the filthy mutterings of the con- 
demned forever and ever?" But this is not 
the final Hell. It is Hades, not Gehenna. 
And this reported conversation need not im- 
ply that the spirits of the departed liter- 
ally talk across the gulf. It reveals the 
sentiments and feelings of the parties, and 
the experiences of disembodied souls can 
only be declared to us in language under- 
stood on earth ; so that it is perfectly natural 
that they should be described as clothing 
their thoughts in words. But this much is 
apparent. The representation shows that 
rich, ungodly men, will find themselves in such 
condition after death, that they would gladly 
exchange places with the poorest of earth 

9 



130 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

safely landed in heaven. This is the ma- 
terial import of this reported conversation, 
which, though figuratively expressed, has a 
definite signification. It opens the very 
chambers of the souls of the departed, and 
discloses their interior emotions and most 
secret thoughts, and that without absurdity 
and without mistake. 

And here we leave the subject. The inter- 
pretation of the " liberalists " is unauthorized 
and absurd, while the view we take yields a 
meaning in perfect harmony with the scope 
and design of the parable, and with the con- 
dition of those who heard it. 



FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 131 



Chapter VII. 

FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 

CHARACTER is what a man is, not what 
he seems. It is the real man, embrac- 
ing his principles, his passions and disposi- 
tions, and particularly his power to select 
motives and act upon his convictions. It is 
not the aggregation of the forces and influ- 
ences that surround and make up the daily- 
life, but the inward man, as surrounded and 
affected, as modified and impressed, by these 
outward influences, and as he comes to be in 
the exercise of his own powers. 

Character is largely an acquisition. Men 
are, in character, what they become in con- 
tact with the educational and social influences 
under which they grow up, and the business 
pursuits that occupy their time and employ 
their energies. True, there is a substratum 
of character in each, a bent of mind, or cer- 
tain texture of spirit, that receives or repels 



132 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

the impressions that come from without; and 
this intrinsic nature, with its idiosyncrasies 
of temper and will, is the real selfhood of 
the person, the foundation, so to speak, on 
which character is builded ; and in this self- 
hood is found the basis of responsibility, be- 
cause here, in the essential nature, is found 
the rationality and volitional power essential 
to responsibility. We can not therefore ad- 
mit that character is the creature of circum- 
stances or of education ; for beneath all the 
extrinsic forces contributing to the formation 
of character, this invincible selfhood retains 
the power of choice, and the self-determining 
right that gives the final bent and impulse to 
the soul. Nevertheless those outward things 
do greatly affect the character. They control 
largely our views of life. They color the 
moral atmosphere in which we dwell. In the 
midst of their clamor and rush for ascendency 
the selfhood too often lies dormant, or pas- 
sively yields to the dominant force, and re- 
ceives impressions and biases without active 
choice. In such cases responsibility is not 
superseded, although the power that supports 
it is not exercised. 



FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 133 

There is in us a tendency towards fixed- 
ness of character. In early life we are fickle, 
fond of changes, and susceptible of impres- 
sions that easily move us in one direction or 
another, according to whim or fancy. But 
as years advance, and we come in contact 
with the world, and realize the sternness of 
the battle of life, novelty loses its charms, 
new sensations are less controlling, new emo- 
tions arise less readily, and new impulses less 
easily turn us out of our accustomed ways. 
The power of choice, having learned to run 
in one direction, whether by passive submis- 
sion or active exertion, naturally adheres to 
its course, and proportionately loses the 
facility if not the ability to accept different 
motives. 

And yet, while we are in this world, there 
is a possibility of change in dispositions, in 
affections, in habits, in character. But the 
time comes when this is a bare possibility, 
the probability being strongly against it. 
The instances of moral changes in advanced 
life are rare, and the influences producing 
them almost always extraordinary ; yet they 
sometimes do occur. The hoary sinner may 



134 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

be converted ; for the power of Divine grace 
is not entirely subject to the rules and con- 
ditions of ordinary influences. It will some- 
times overleap the bounds of ordinary expe- 
rience and accomplish wonders. Then, under 
its quickening energies, habit, powerful and 
long continued, may be overcome. They 
that are accustomed to do evil may learn to 
do good. And yet the Ethiopian does not 
change his skin nor the leopard his spots. 
Those long habituated to sin, do not of their 
own energies leap out of its meshes, break 
the chains that bound them, and secure de- 
liverance from thralldom. Their deliverance 
is of God. They become prodigies of mercy, 
and illustrations of the possibility of grace, 
such as we have no warrant for expecting 
will be often repeated. 

The possibility of change is inseparable 
from probation. So soon as a subject of 
moral government reaches a state of con- 
firmed holiness, so as to be incapable of de- 
fection, it is impossible to apply the term 
"probation" to his state, in any intelligible 
sense. He is no longer on trial whose char- 
acter is unalterable, whose destiny is sealed. 



FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 135 

If any sink so far into the mire of sensuality as 
to deaden their moral sensibilities, and thereby 
render repentance impossible, while yet in 
this world of probation, this fixedness of 
character closes the real trial, and the man 
of " reprobate mind" is already doomed. 
Abandoned of God and given up to his own 
way, with habits fixed and energies all bent 
to evil, he is "without God, and without 
hope in the world." His trial is virtually 
ended — his destiny is morally determined. 
At least he has gone beyond the ordinary 
limits of grace, and if saved it must be by 
extraordinary manifestations of the Divine 
Spirit, which God can give, but which we can 
not anticipate, and which we have no right 
to depend upon. 

This state of moral fixedness may be 
reached in this world, if we read the Scrip- 
tures correctly, or if we rightly interpret the 
great facts of human experience which bear 
upon the subject. We would not say that 
any man absolutely passes the line of proba- 
tion while yet on earth, so that all possibility 
of his salvation, even by the extraordinary 
revelations of grace, is gone; but many 



136 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

undoubtedly reach that degree of insensibility 
which renders all the ordinary appliances of 
the Gospel ineffectual, so that nothing but 
direct, supernatural agency, such as the Gos- 
pel does not promise, can bring them to re- 
pentance. But whether this desperate ex- 
perience is verified in life or not, all the 
tendencies of human nature, and all the 
observable experiences we meet, are in the 
direction of this fixedness, so that with each 
day's additional indulgence in sin the cords 
of habit are strengthened, and the prob- 
abilities of a return to God are diminished. 
Sin blinds the mind and hardens the heart. 
Habit grows and increases its power, while it 
divests the person of his capability of resist- 
ance to its demands, thus in double measure 
intensifying its hold, and multiplying the 
chances that it will prove unalterable. In 
the light of this acknowledged tendency of 
habit, and of the history of the past, all re- 
gard the conversion of an aged sinner as 
something worthy of remark. When an 
active, earnest man, possessing any vigor of 
thought or feeling, passes the meridian of 
life without yielding to the Gospel, the 



FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 137 

common sentiment, whether embodied in ex- 
pression or not, and however reluctantly 
owned, is, "He is joined to his idols, let him 
alone." This fact is stern, and even terrible 
to contemplate ; yet it is a fact which stands 
out in human history with such prominence 
that every one is forced to see it. 

This tendency to fixedness of character 
suggests the termination of probation and the 
utter impossibility of moral changes when 
death once removes us from this world of 
change. Here life is elemental*} 7 . The mani- 
fest design of our earthly existence is the 
development of character. This world is a 
vast school-house, and every thing that sur- 
rounds us fills the office of teacher. We be- 
gin to learn as we begin to live, and through 
all our years we both give out to others and 
receive from others new impressions, and 
thus, whether we will or not, we are being 
educated for eternity. During this educa- 
tional process change is inevitable. It is the 
law of our being and of our probation. But 
as the process advances, the changes become 
more and more difficult. In old age they are 
next to impossible. Then reason tells us 



138 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

they will cease forever. But reason itself 
can not penetrate the veil that shuts from 
view the mysteries of the state beyond the 
grave. All the indications point to death as 
terminating the influences and helps neces- 
sary to repentance and the regeneration of 
our natures. But Revelation alone can dis- 
close the realities of the great hereafter, and 
speak with authority of the condition of the 
departed in Hades, and her voice should be 
heard in silence. And Revelation tells us 
that all is fixedness in the future. Not one 
ray of hope is held out to the thoughtless 
and negligent of earth, that duties undone 
here may there be performed, or that sins 
cherished here may there be repented of and 
forsaken. "They that go down into the pit 
can not hope for thy truth." 

The wise man said, "There is no work, 
nor device, nor wisdom in the grave, whither 
thou goest;" and on this fact he argued the 
folly of postponing the duties of the pres- 
ent,, and based his earnest appeal, "Whatso- 
ever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might." It means, if it means any thing, 
that work neglected in life can not be done 



FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 139 

after death. There repentance and reforma- 
tion are out of the question. Death brings 
the night wherein no man can work. And 
it is with strict application to the eternal state 
that Divine Revelation says, "He that is 
unjust let him be unjust still ; he that is filthy, 
let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, 
let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, 
let him be holy still." This fixedness of 
character which has never been found in this 
world as a rule, and which can not co-exist 
with probation and with Gospel privileges, 
necessarily belongs to the period after death, 
when it will not distinguish exceptional cases, 
but become the law of being, suitable to the 
state of retribution and destiny. 

The righteous die. They enter a state 
of unchanging blessedness. They are con- 
firmed in holiness. No possibility of defection 
throws its dark shadow across their pathway 
as they revel in the beatitudes of an immortal 
life. The period of trial is past, and the 
broad seal of triumph marks them as eter- 
nally saved. And the wicked die. They 
carry with them into the invisible world the 
character they formed in life. They go cov- 



140 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

ered with guilt and unbelief, with understand- 
ings darkened and consciences seared ; they 
go with the will stubborn and rebellious, and 
the moral nature debased, so as to contain 
the elements of subjective wretchedness, even 
if no positive penalties beyond the conscious- 
ness of loss awaited them. Where in all the 
Scriptures is there revealed any provision or 
agency intended to change their moral dispo- 
sitions and bring them to repentance ? Where 
is there even a hint that probation is con- 
tinued or that a new trial is instituted? 
Once the veil is drawn aside, and a soul in 
torment after death is shown to us in search 
of this provision, anxious for the mitigation 
of his suffering; and if there could be any 
hope for relief, that occasion for its intima- 
tion could not have passed. But the divine 
teacher made no promise. The "gulf" that 
separated the rich man from happiness could 
not be crossed; and as firmly "fixed" as was 
that gulf is the character of every one that 
passes into the unseen state. There is no 
fact, principle, or intimation given in the 
Scriptures from which the moral change 
of the soul in death or after death can be 



FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 141 

inferred. Death stereotypes character. The 
purgatorial probation of Romanism is a myth. 
Prayers for the dead are a cheat The soul 
retains its essential attributes — consciousness, 
memory, and will ; otherwise identity is lost. 
These imply the power to recall the past ; 
and the memory of a life of sin, with reflec- 
tions upon mercy despised and grace rejected, 
will bring regret and remorse; but these 
moral sensations have in themselves no trans- 
forming power. They are not repentance. 
They are the elements of misery, and when 
burdened with conscious hopelessness, they 
oppress the soul with darkness deep and ter- 
rible enough, without the added tortures of 
material fire. As certainly as the soul sur- 
vives the body, these moral sensations will 
cleave to it as a vesture, and anguish and self- 
reproach will follow the wicked through all 
the depths of the world of darkness. 

The idea that God will change the char- 
acter of those who die in sin, by special 
interposition after death, is unsupported by 
any passage of Scripture, and is liable to 
insuperable objections. We note the follow- 
ing: I. It is contrary to all the passages that 



142 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

represent the present as the time of sal- 
vation: "Behold now is the accepted time; 
behold now is the day of salvation." 2. It 
destroys all motives to repentance drawn 
from the shortness of time and the uncer- 
tainty of life. 3. It encourages the wicked 
to neglect preparation for the future till 
death. 4. It breaks the force of Scriptural 
appeals to prepare to meet God, particu- 
larly those that are based on considerations 
of the future state. 5. It implies a change 
in the divine administration which would 
involve a change in God himself. Let us 
pursue this last thought a moment. If the 
wicked are changed after death, it is with 
their consent or without it. If with their 
consent, means must be employed to gain 
their consent which are not now employed ; 
for all the means now employed fail, and may 
fail forever. If more effectual means are em- 
ployed then than now, a change in the divine 
government is implied; for the Scriptures 
assure us that all the means consistent with 
the divine government are now employed for 
this purpose, and without success; and if 
God does all he can do to gain the sinner's 



FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 143 

consent to be saved, and then after death 
does more than he could do here, so as to 
render failure impossible, a change in his gov- 
ernment is manifest to all who think upon it, 
unless it is the order of his government to 
give men a better chance for repentance after 
death than before it. But this last suppo- 
sition is contrary to all the representations 
of this life as the day of grace and of mer- 
ciful visitation. It can not, therefore, be the 
order of his government to afford more grace 
after death than in this life. But if he 
changes the hearts of sinners after death 
without their consent, the change in his gov- 
ernment is still more marked; for it is plain 
not only that this is something which he does 
not do now, but which he can not do in har- 
mony with the principles of his government. 
We know that he does not change men's 
hearts without their consent, and to suppose 
that he can, and will not, is to suppose 
that he prefers sin to holiness, so far as 
this life is concerned, in every instance in 
which he permits men to persist in sin. 
Although we know so little of the limitations 
of the divine nature, there is no rashness in 



144 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

the assumption that God prefers holiness all 
the time, and seeks its promotion in con- 
formity to the law of his being and the nature 
of human souls. 

But suppose that sinners are purified after 
death, without their consent, could they en- 
joy holiness? Could they unite with the 
saints in the worship and adoration of that 
Being against whom they had rebelled, and 
whom they would not consent to serve, till 
his resistless power destroyed their moral 
freedom and changed their hearts contrary to 
their desire? Is not forced holiness a contra- 
diction in terms? In other words, is not free- 
dom essential to both holiness and happiness? 
And if a sinner is changed into a saint with- 
out his consent, is not his freedom lost? We 
know that it may be said that God can in- 
fuse holiness into the soul without the sin- 
ner's consent, and without destroying his 
freedom, because with God all things are pos- 
sible. But then it is no contradiction to this 
Scriptural expression, and no limitation of 
the divine power, to say that God can not 
work contradictions. He can not do and not 
do at the same time with reference to the 



FIXEDNESS OF CHARACTER IN HADES. 145 

same thing". Nor can a man be forced and 
not forced, free and not free, at the same 
time. And is there no contradiction in this 
case? If not — if God can make men holy 
without their consent, why does he not do it 
now? Why have we not a few examples of 
persons forced into holiness? Holiness is as 
desirable now as it ever will be, and God re- 
veals himself as doing all he can consistently 
with his nature and government to secure 
it — why, then, does he not at once overrule 
rebellion and unbelief, and rid the universe 
of sin with a sweep of his right arm? If 
holiness were the product of power we might 
expect this; but, instead, it is a moral achieve- 
ment, requiring the concurrence of free-will, 
and therefore Omnipotence awaits the march 
of spiritual forces which move without co- 
ercion. 

If men die in sin, and enter Hades bear- 
ing the characters formed in this life, with 
the incrustations of evil habit upon their 
moral natures, they pass, in that condition, 
beyond the remedial agencies of the Gospel 
of grace, and perish forever, or God's gov- 
ernment must change in its fundamental prin- 

10 



146 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

ciples, and so completely, too, as to imply a 
change in his own nature. But God can not 
change; his government must abide; and fix- 
edness of character will be the order of the 
invisible state. ''They that go down into 
the pit can not hope for thy truth." Penal 
fires do not expiate sin. "Behold, now is 
the accepted time; behold, now is the day 
of salvation." 



GEHENNA— THE ISSUE STATED. 147 



Chapter VIII. 

GEHENNA— THE ISSUE STATED. 

IN considering further the New Testament 
idea of Hell, it will be necessary to study 
the use of the word Gehenna more fully than 
we have done. 

This word, more nearly than any other 
one in the Scriptures, corresponds in mean- 
ing with the ideas commonly attached to the 
English word Hell, so far as the finality of 
punishment is concerned, and can not, by any 
possibility of fair criticism, be forced to give 
expression to the idea of a place of tempo- 
rary affliction or reformatory torment. It 
points to the extreme punishment of the ene- 
mies of Christ, to the last abode of the lost. 

None have yet been cast into Gehenna, and 
we hazard nothing in assuming that the place 
itself has not been created. It amounts to 
nothing against the argument in hand that its 



148 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

locality in the universe is unknown, and that 
ages upon ages will yet pass before "the pit 
be digged for the wicked." Not even the 
devil has yet reached this abode, as we have 
seen. The fallen angels are not in Gehenna, 
but in Tartarus; they are not yet "pun- 
ished," but are reserved under chains of dark- 
ness to be punished at the day of judgment. 
And so it is with the Avicked dead. They 
too are "reserved unto the day of judgment 
to be punished," which is also the day of 
"perdition of ungodly men." They are in 
custody, under arrest, awaiting the revelation 
of the judicial decision that consigns them to 
the final doom. 

But the "chains of darkness," under 
which the fallen angels are held, are not ma- 
terial chains. We need not suppose that 
they impede locomotion, or bind those on 
whom they rest as to locality. The devil, 
with his mysterious host, goes "to and fro 
in the earth, walking up and down in it." 
"As a roaring lion, he walketh about, seek- 
ing whom he may devour." This is now his 
sphere and his occupation; but then, after 
the judgment, when cast into the "lake of 



GEHENNA— THE ISSUE STATED. 149 

fire," his access to earth will cease, and he 
will tempt no more. Now he is in the invis- 
ible world — in Hades — wherein is darkness 
and torment, and this prison is Tartanis^ but 
it is not Gelienna. When the Savior used this 
word he looked beyond Tartarus and beyond 
Hades; he looked beyond the disembodied 
state, beyond the resurrection and the judg- 
ment, and pointed to the last calamity of the 
wicked. Hence Gehenna is different from Tar- 
tarns and Hades in this: It receives none till 
after the judgment, and then it never delivers 
them up. 

The field of controversy about this word 
is very narrow. In relation to its origin, his- 
tory, and meaning there is scarcely any dis- 
pute. It is agreed on all hands that it is 
made up of two Hebrew words which liter- 
ally signify the valley of Hinnon. This was 
the name of the valley south of Jerusalem in 
which the worship of Moloch had long been 
practiced under the idolatrous kings of Israel, 
and there is nothing in all the history of idol- 
atry more degrading than the rites here cele- 
brated. This horrid worship consisted largely 
in sacrificing children bv burning them to 



ISO NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

death. It is said that the brazen image, 
which represented the monster deity, was 
heated with fire, and the child laid in its 
arms till literally roasted. While this savage 
cruelty was going on, in order to prevent the 
cries of the child being heard distinctly, so as 
to excite feelings of humanity, a terrific noise 
was kept up by the beating of drums, from 
which circumstance the place was called 
Tophet, the place of drums. At length, 
when the Jews were brought back to the 
worship of the true God, King Josiah defiled 
the place, that "no man should make his 
son or his daughter pass through the fire 
unto Moloch." (2 King, xxiii, 10.) From 
that time this place was held in the greatest 
abhorrence by the Jews. They devoted it to 
the basest purposes, by casting into it the 
carcasses of dead beasts, and making it the 
receptacle of the filth and offal of ■ the city; 
and so loathsome did it become that it was 
found necessary to keep fires constantly burn- 
ing in it in order to prevent the accumula- 
tion of putrid odor, and to guard against the 
generation and spread of pestilence. Crimi- 
nals of the worst type were executed here, 



GEHENNA— THE ISSUE STATED. 151 

and to be burned in this valley was looked 
upon as the most horrible punishment any 
one could suffer. As time rolled on every 
thing conspired to render the place repulsive 
to the Jews, and they were not slow in carry- 
ing their conceptions of its horrors and abom- 
inations into the future world, where they 
were taught to expect the consummation- of 
all wickedness and all suffering. The history 
of the terrible idolatry which had here been 
practiced; the curse pronounced upon it by 
the authority of kings and prophets; the filth, 
the putrefaction, the corruption of the atmos- 
phere, together with the lurid fires burning 
by day and night, all combined to make it 
appalling beyond description. In the days 
of Christ it had long been regarded as a 
lively emblem of the punishment of the ene- 
mies of God, and he but conformed to the 
custom of the Jews in using it as a symbol 
of the perdition awaiting the wicked in the 
future state. 

Thus far we go hand in hand with nearly 
all whose company is desirable. For schol- 
ars, critics, and commentators, of all creeds 
and all classes, substantially agree in this 



152 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

representation of Gehenna; and it is generally 
agreed that in the discourses of our Lord, 
this literal valley of Hinnom is the emblem 
of the punishment which he declared to be 
the portion of unbelievers. Where, then, is 
the issue? It does not relate to the origin, 
history, or meaning of the word in question, 
or scarcely to its use, but almost solely to 
the application of it as a symbol. The fact 
that it symbolized punishment is not in ques- 
tion, but the point to be determined is 
whether it symbolized temporal or eternal 
punishment. Here we find divergence. Some 
hold that all the punishment pictured to the 
mind by this forcible symbol was temporal, 
and that particular reference was had to the 
national calamities about to befall the Jews. 
This is the view taken by most Universalists, 
and concurred in by other "liberalists " who 
respect the authority of the Scriptures, and 
yet reject eternal retributions. With others, 
who doubt inspiration, and rest their disbelief 
on philosophical speculations, we have noth- 
ing to do in this inquiry. Our business is 
with the new Testament, and those who re- 
ceive it as the word of God, accepting its 



GEHENNA— THE ISSUE STATED. 153 

decisions as final in all questions of doctrine. 
We honor the opinions of such, and propose 
to treat them respectfully and fairly, while 
we shall not spare either premise or conclu- 
sion which is not sound. The question is not 
whether this word is correctly translated or 
not ; on that point there is no issue. Nor is 
it whether it is to be taken literally or to be 
interpreted as a symbol ; on this point there 
is scarcely room for an issue. Nearly all con- 
cede its symbolical use. But what is the 
punishment of which it is a symbol, and to 
which it points? Does it relate to the pun- 
ishment of individuals or of nations? Are 
all its results reached in this world, or do they 
go on in the future world? And if the pun- 
ishment denoted by this word extends into 
the future, is it temporary and restricted, or is 
it final and eternal ? In the study of these 
questions we can only proceed safely as 
directed by the light of the infallible Word. 
We dare not lean upon lexicons or upon hu- 
man authorities of any kind, only so far as 
they may serve as helps in bringing us into 
the light that God has given. Our appeal 
shall, therefore, be to the Scriptures, to Bible 



154 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

use, which is the final arbiter of Scriptural 
terms, and the sole authority in all that relates 
to faith and duty and destiny. 

With the issue thus stated, and the field 
of controversy narrowed to legitimate dimen- 
sions, we can go forward in the study of the 
Scriptures with some hope of safe conclu- 
sions. But since the leaders in the Scriptural 
argument against eternal punishment, are the 
advocates of universal salvation, it will be 
important to have the views of such in mind. 
We, therefore, give a brief chapter for this 
purpose, not forgetting, however, that one 
of the peculiarities of "liberalism" is, that 
each man speaks for himself and represents 
only himself. 



UNI VERS ALIST EXPOSITIONS. 155 



Chapter IX. 

UNIVERSALIST EXPOSITIONS. 

[" T will not be possible to proceed under- 
-*- standingly in this investigation without 
considering what the opposers of eternal pun- 
ishment have said in regard to this word ; 
and Universalist writers must have precedence 
in this connection, since they have given 
shape and tone to all "liberalistic" senti- 
ments, and furnished nearly all that passes 
for argument on that side of the question. 

I select a few authorities of this class of 
unquestionable respectability, and shall regard 
them as representing the full force of the 
opposition. Rev. G. S. Weaver says: "As 
in a literal sense none were punished in Ge- 
henna but such as had run the whole length 
of the career of wickedness and crime, and 
filled the measure of iniquity to its very brim, 
so in an emblematic sense none were threat- 



156 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

ened with or suffered Gehenna punishment 
but those who had taken the last steps in 
folly and crime. In a word, it meant the last 
and severest punishment, the miserable end 
and result of wickedness, the finale of human 
folly and crime, of human indifference to 
divine warnings and teachings." (Bible View 
of Hell, page 68.) This statement is suffi- 
ciently correct, as indicating the general mean- 
ing of the term and the sense in which Christ 
used it in his discourses. It fully recognizes 
the main fact on which every thing in the 
discussion hinges, and justifies the position 
taken in this argument that it relates only to 
the last calamity that shall befall the wicked. 
The mistake of this writer is not in his defi- 
nition of the word, nor in his assumption that 
it is to be understood in the emblematic 
sense, but simply in his application of the 
emblem to a punishment, which, though it be 
■ 'the miserable end and result of wicked- 
ness — the fina/e of human folly and crime" — 
is, nevertheless, only a temporary evil, out of 
which the sinner shall pass into the blessed- 
ness of an eternal life. We take his defini- 
tion of the terms and his description of the 



UNIVERSALIST EXPOSITIONS. 157 

punishment indicated, and insist that Gehenna 
does mean "the last and severest punishment, 
the miserable end and result of wickedness, 
the finale of human folly and crime." By 
this statement we shall abide. There is not 
a passage in the New Testament that requires 
a different definition. 

T. B. Thayer, another distinguished writer 
on the same side, says: "The word Gehenna 
or Hell, in the New Testament, is used as a 
symbol of any thing that was foul or repul- 
sive ; but especially as a figure of dreadful 
and oppressive judgments." (History and 
Origin of the Doctrine of Endless Punish- 
ment, page 109.) Here again, we say, true 
enough as a definition, though cautiously 
expressed. The ground is clearly taken that 
Gehenna is a symbol ; and that our Savior 
used it as a symbol of punishment, even as a 
" figure of dreadful and oppressive judg- 
ments." The "dreadful and oppressive judg- 
ments," in the view of this writer, were all 
of temporary character, and on this side of 
the resurrection, so as not to interfere in the 
smallest degree with the eternal felicity of 
any on whom they might fall. But this is 



158 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

bare assumption, which it is not safe to admit 
without some authority. If a single instance 
could be adduced where our Savior used this 
word to denote temporary judgments, without 
any question or mistake, there would be some 
show of reason for the restriction of his lan- 
guage to the calamities experienced this side 
of the eternal state ; but no such instance 
can be found. 

The following questions and answers from 
the " Universalist Catechism," by J. M. Aus- 
tin, will give us a clear view of the position 
of that school of teachers in relation to this 
word. The quotations are from pages 33, 34. 

" Questio7t. Are the words, valley of Hin- 
nom, or Gehenna, or Tophet ever used in the 
Old Testament as signifying a place of end- 
less suffering? 

" Anszvei'. They are not. No evidence 
to this effect can be adduced. 

11 Qnes. How are these words used in the 
Old Testament? 

"Ans. They are used as signifying tem- 
poral punishment and calamity. 

" Qnes. Is there any evidence or any 
probability that the meaning of these words 



UNIVERSALTST EXPOSITIONS. 159 

had changed between the days of the Old 
Testament writers and the advent of the 
Redeemer? 

" Ans. There is no evidence whatever of 
this description. 

" Ques. What meaning-, then, are we 
bound to suppose the Savior attached to these 
words when he used them? 

"Ans. We are bound to believe he used 
them precisely as they were used in the Old 
Testament ; namely, to signify temporal ca- 
lamity and distress. 

"Ques. With these explanations before 
us, how should we understand the words 
'cast into Hell,' as used in the parable under 
consideration ? 

"Ans. We may understand them either 
literally, as signifying being cast into the 
valley of Hinnom, to be burned to death, 
or figuratively, as becoming involved in ca- 
lamities and wars, in consequence of sinful 
gratifications." 

This is a fair specimen of the treatment 
of this subject by the exponents of what has 
been termed " advanced thought" in Scrip- 
tural exegesis, and to multiply names and 



i6o NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

illustrations would not shed additional light. 
The points are adroitly put and their plausibil- 
ity is unquestionable. But is there not soph- 
istry in their arrangement and application? 
We shall see. 

The argument in the Catechism assumes 
what should be established with proof; namely, 
that the word Gehenna is used in the Old 
Testament only with reference to temporal 
calamities. A few examples of its use in 
this sense would have been in place. But if 
they, had been given they would not cover 
the real point in issue, unless all the Old 
Testament passages had been cited and shown 
to require this meaning. Indeed it is quite 
possible that a few passages in the prophets 
related primarily to temporal calamities and 
ultimately to the last punishment, "the finale 
of a life of folly and crime." But what- 
ever the Old Testament usage, the next 
point in this exposition is utterly inadmis- 
sible. It is that no change took place in the 
meaning of this word after the times of the 
writers of the Old Testament, and that there- 
fore Christ must have used it in the same 
sense, and attached to it precisely the same 



UNIVERSALIST EXPOSITIONS. i(5i 

ideas that prevailed in their days. The facts 
do not justify this statement. Christ often 
gave a new meaning to Old Testament words 
and phrases, and was quite in the habit of 
taking the familiar things of every-day life, 
to which others attached ideas of only tem- 
poral significance, and applying them to 
things spiritual and eternal. Instances of 
this are manifold, and they will occur to 
every reader. But the statement is sophisti- 
cal, in that it speaks of the meaning of the 
word, where not its meaning but its use was 
in question. The word meant the valley of 
Hinnom when used by the Old Testament 
writers, and its literal meaning was the same 
when the Divine Teacher used it in his dis- 
courses. But the question is, Had it not 
been so often used in the figurative sense, 
that at the time of Christ it was generally 
understood to be the emblem of punishment 
after death, and not the emblem of merely tem- 
poral calamities? This is a question of fact, 
and the preponderance of proof is against the 
assumption of the Catechism. If it were clear 
that Christ spoke of Gehenna only in the literal 
sense, and with strict reference to the mean- 
ii 



1 62 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

ing of the word, the point made by the 
Catechism would have some force in it. But 
this is not clear. Indeed the Catechism does 
not teach nor allow this view of the case. It 
holds that Christ used the word figuratively. 
The prophets used it both literally and figu- 
ratively. Then the real question is, Must this 
word, when used figuratively by our Lord, 
in his profound discourses concerning sin and 
punishment and eternal destinies, be limited 
to the identical signification belonging to it 
in the Old Testament? To state the ques- 
tion is 10 answer it. Christ, as an independ- 
ent teacher, chose the language of the people 
and used figures that were familiar to all, and 
clothed them with his own ideas, often pew 
and strange, yet so as not to mislead. Con- 
ceding that he used this word figuratively, 
we are obliged to seek the application and 
meaning of the figure, not in the usages of 
the Old Testament, but in his own language. 
His meaning is found not in the literal mean- 
ing of the word in his own day or in the 
days of the prophets, but in his own use and 
application of the term. If he used the 
word figuratively with reference to the finale 



UNIVERSALIST EXPOSITIONS. 163 

of a life of sin, and thereby made the valley 
of Hinnom, with all its horrors, the emblem 
of the punishment of the wicked after death, 
it makes no difference to the argument 
whether it had ever been so used before 
or not. 

But here is another loose statement in this 
Catechism. It is intimated that we can select 
the sense to be attached to this word. We 
may understand it "either literally or figura- 
tively!" Can this be so? Surely this au- 
thor is wide of the mark here. The word 
must be taken literally or figuratively. It 
can not be both. The sense is too widely 
different. We must take it according to the 
facts. If Christ used this word literally, and 
meant by it just what is the literal mean- 
ing of the word, we dare not go beyond this 
and give it a figurative meaning. The as- 
sumption that he used it in the literal sense 
estops us from further inquiry concerning its 
emblematical meaning. On the other hand, 
if he did not use it with reference to its lit- 
eral meaning, we are not bound by its literal 
meaning, whether in the days of Christ or of 
the prophets. This Catechism dodges the 



1 64 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

real issue by refusing to decide definitely 
whether we are bound to take the word liter- 
ally or figuratively ; and this is not an un- 
usual thing with this class of expositors. 
They often find it convenient to alternate 
from the literal to the figurative according to 
the demands of the occasion ; and when they 
adopt the figurative, they satisfy themselves 
too easily without tracing the figure to its 
application, or fixing upon it any definite 
meaning. This practice is reprehensible, in 
that it reduces the parables of the New Tes- 
tament to the character of riddles, and puts 
the plain utterances of Christ on a level with 
pagan oracles. Figurative language is not 
necessarily ambiguous. Its meaning is as 
definite and as easily traced as is the most lit- 
eral statement, and its interpretation requires 
no less positive rules than the other. To say 
of any word or phrase, "Oh, it is figurative; 
it may mean this, or it may mean that," is 
quite too common, but it is by no means 
satisfactory. But the author of this Cate- 
chism elsewhere admits that the Jews, at the 
time of Christ, had fallen into belief in the 
doctrine of eternal punishment, which he 



UNIVERSALIST EXPOSITIONS. 165 

calls " the pagan dogma of eternal torture ;" 
then, why not at once acknowledge the most 
natural thing in the world, that they were 
accustomed to regard the literal Gehenna as 
the emblem of that punishment? If the Jews 
believed this doctrine at all, as nearly all re- 
spectable Universalists admit they did, they 
believed that the Old Testament authorized 
it, and they used Gehenna to express it. It 
matters not, so far as this point is concerned, 
whence they derived this belief— whether they 
imbibed it from heathen sources or received 
it by tradition from their fathers or gathered 
it directly from the Scriptures — their faith in 
it proves that they believed their Scriptures 
warranted it, and their understanding of the 
words of Christ would be equally affected by 
their belief, whether that belief rested upon 
one foundation or another. We come, there- 
fore, to the inquiry whether the Jewish people 
in the days of Christ believed in eternal pun- 
ishment or not. If they did, the sense in 
which Gehenna occurs in the New Testament 
is settled in favor of the proposition we affirm ; 
namely, that it means the last calamity of the 
wicked, the finale of a life of folly and crime. 



t66 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 



Chapter X. 

THE JEWISH BELIEF. 

THE best way to learn the opinions of a 
people at a given time in their history, 
is to study their literature at the period in 
question, or as near to it as is possible. It 
is, however, conceded that there is no great 
amount of Jewish writing extant and now 
accessible which was unquestionably pro- 
duced in the days of Christ and the apostles. 
Josephus and other Jewish writers of that age 
record, with great minuteness and general 
accuracy, the history of that nation, recount- 
ing their struggles, their oppressions, and 
their victories and defeats; but these records 
do not reveal with much clearness their 
mental conceptions of philosophy and religion. 
The discourse of Josephus concerning Hades, 
which is published as a part of his works, 
treats upon the subject in hand, and would 
be of great value, if its genuineness were 



THE JEWISH BELIEF. 167 

incontestably established; but this is not the 
case. There are grave doubts whether it was 
written by Josephus. We do not, therefore, 
appeal to it as the language of the Jewish 
historian, nor do we place much dependence 
upon it as an authority for the particular 
shading of Jewish sentiment; but even though 
marks of a Christian paternity be traceable in 
it, its unquestionable antiquity, and the man- 
ifest purpose of the writer, whoever he was, 
to represent Jewish ideas, and his evident 
competency, give to the discourse sufficient 
weight to impose the burden of proof upon 
those who assert that it falsely attributes to 
the Jews opinions which they did not hold. 
According to this writer the Jews believed in 
a judgment after death, followed by eternal 
punishment to the wicked. It is evident that 
at the age in which this document was 
written intelligent Christians so understood 
the Jews and so represented them, and, so 
far as we can learn, without complaint or 
contradiction. 

Josephus does, however, tell us that the 
Pharisees held "that all souls are incor- 
ruptible, but the souls of good men are 



1 68 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

only removed into other bodies, while the 
souls of bad men are subject to eternal pun- 
ishment." (Wars of the Jews, II, 8, 14.) 
Again: "For the opinion obtains among 
them that bodies indeed are corruptible, 
and the matter of them not permanent, but 
that souls continue exempt from death for- 
ever; and that, emanating from the most sub- 
tile ether, they are enfolded in bodies as 
prisons, to which they are drawn by some 
natural spell. But when loosed from the 
bonds of the flesh, as if released from a long 
captivity, they rejoice and are borne upward. 
In this opinion, harmonizing with the sons of 
Greece, they maintain that virtuous souls 
have their habitation beyond the ocean, in 
a region oppressed neither with rains nor 
snows nor heats, but which the ever gentle 
zephyr refreshes, breathing from the w 7 ave; 
while to the bad they allot a gloomy and 
tempestuous cavern, full of never-ending pun- 
ishments. According to the same notion, 
the Greeks seem to me to apportion to the 
brave, whom they style heroes and demi- 
gods, the islands of the blessed; but to the 
souls of the wicked, the place of the impious 



THE JEWISH BELIEF. 169 

in Hades, where their legends tell that certain 
persons are punished, as Sisyphus, and Tan- 
talus, and Tityus, laying" it down, first, that 
souls are immortal, and deriving from thence 
their exhortations to virtue, and their dis- 
suasives from vice." (Jewish War, II, 8, 
10, 11.) 

The Targums are perhaps the most au- 
thoritative expositions of Jewish faith, as it 
was when Christ was on earth, now within 
our reach. These afford unmistakable evi- 
dence that eternal punishment was taught 
and believed by the Jewish people. But the 
Targums are rarely seen or read by Chris- 
tian people, and a few general remarks in re- 
lation to them will be in place. The follow- 
ing is from Home's Introduction, and agrees 
with the most learned opinions on the subject: 
"The Chaldee word Targum signifies, in 
general, any version or explanation ; but this 
appellation is more particularly restricted to 
the versions or paraphrases of the Old Test- 
ament, executed in the East Aramaean or 
Chaldee dialect, as it is usually called. These 
Targums are termed paraphrases or exposi- 
tions, because they are rather comments and 



170 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

explications, than literal translations of the 
text ; so that when the law was ' read in the 
synagogue every Sabbath-day,' in pure Bib- 
lical Hebrew, an explanation was subjoined to 
it in Chaldee, in order to render it intelligible 
to the people, who had but an imperfect 
knowledge of the Hebrew language. This 
practice, as already observed, originated with 
Ezra. As there are no traces of any written 
Targums prior to those of Onkelos and Jona- 
than, who are supposed to have lived about 
the time of our Savior, it is highly probable 
that these paraphrases were at first merely 
oral ; that subsequently the ordinary glosses 
on the more difficult passages were committed 
to writing, and that as the Jews were bound 
by an ordinance of their elders to possess a 
copy of the law, these glosses were either 
afterwards collected together and deficiencies 
in them supplied, or new and connected par- 
aphrases were formed." The Targums were 
evidently a growth. They contain the thought 
of the leaders of the people as taught in the syn- 
agogues, and unquestionably reveal the preva- 
lent opinions of the Jews at the time of Christ 
and prior to his day. There are ten of them, 



THE JEWISH BELIEF. 171 

on different parts of the Scriptures, written at 
different times and by different men, but when 
collected they form a continuous paraphrase 
on nearly all of the Old Testament. In re- ■ 
gard to the light they shed on the particular 
subject in hand, I quote the learned Dr. 
Whitby — not as an authority upon the main 
issue, but as a capable and trustworthy wit- 
ness to a fact; and the fact to be established 
is, that the Jews themselves did use this word 
with reference to future punishment, accord- 
ing to the testimony of the Targums. 

Dr. Whitby says: "It seems reasonable 
to interpret them [words rendered Hell} ac- 
cording to the received opinion of the Jews, 
since otherwise our Lord's using them so 
frequently in speaking to them, without say- 
ing any thing to show that he did not under- 
stand the expression as they did, must have 
strengthened them in their error. Now it is 
certain that Gehenna (Hell) was still looked on 
as a place in which the wicked were to be 
tormented by fire. So the Jerusalem Tar- 
gum, on Gen. xv, 17, represents it as spark- 
ling and flaming with fire, into which the 
wicked fall. And the Targum upon Eccl. 



172 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

ix, 15, speaks of the fire of Hell; and chap- 
ter x, 11, of the sparks of the fire of Hell; 
and chapter viii, 10, of the wicked who shall 
go to be burned in Hell. ,, 

The Doctor goes on to show from the sim- 
ilarity of the language of the Jews in the 
Targums to the expressions of our Lord with 
reference to Gehenna, that they would and 
did understand him as using that term with 
reference to punishment in the future state. 
The argument is conclusive; and the efforts 
of the opposition to break its force, or to 
obviate the conclusion to which it leads, so 
far from proving effective, tend rather to 
strengthen the conviction that it is unanswer- 
able. There is in fact no answer to it, unless 
it can be shown that its foundation is false — 
that the Jews did not believe in eternal pun- 
ishment, and needed to be taught it as a new 
doctrine, contrary to their previous ideas, in 
order to apprehend or believe it. 

Dr. Adam Clarke tells us that the Targum 
on Isaiah xxxiii, 14, is as follows: "The sin- 
ners in Zion are broken down ; fear hath 
seized the ungodly, who are suffering for their 
ways. They say, Who among us shall dwell 



THE JEWISH BELIEF. 173 

in Zion, where the splendor of the Divine 
Majesty is like a consuming fire? Who of 
us shall dwell in Jerusalem, where the un- 
godly are judged and delivered into hell for 
an eternal burning?" 

But those who assail the doctrine are not 
so ready to assail the foundation of this argu- 
ment. They only seek to cast doubt upon 
it, or to leave it involved in uncertainty, so 
as to weaken any inferences that may be 
drawn from premises which are not well un- 
derstood in all their relations. The cautious- 
ness of their movements is accounted for by 
the fact that the most learned among them 
admit the main point in the case — that the 
Jews did, on some ground or other, believe 
that the wicked were destined to perish for- 
ever. They do, however, seek to obscure 
the argument, so far as it rests upon the Tar- 
gums, by questioning the authority of these 
writings as containing the opinions of the 
Jews at the time of Christ. The Targums, 
as we have seen, contain the glosses or ex- 
planations which the Jewish teachers made 
upon the books of the Old Testament, after 
the mass of the people had lost the accurate 



174 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

knowledge of the Hebrew tongue in the Bab- 
ylonian captivity. These expositions were first 
made orally, soon after the return of the Jews 
from Babylon ; and they were passed down 
from one generation to another, in the teach- 
ings of the synagogues, until they were finally 
committed to writing with great care, so that 
they might be preserved in their purity for 
the benefit of all the Jews, scattered among 
the nations of the earth. Then, when Ave 
remember how strongly the Jews were at- 
tached to the opinions of their fathers, and 
how carefully they preserved their traditions, 
regarding them as sacred, the date of the 
written Targums will form no solid objection 
to the representations they make of the faith 
of the Jews, or rather to the application of 
that representation to the time Christ was on 
earth, even if it should turn out that they 
were not written till after the destruction of 
Jerusalem and the dispersion that followed. 
There is no evidence that the Jews changed 
their belief in regard to future punishment, 
or with reference to any of their great doc- 
trines, between the days of Christ and the 
writing of the Targums; so that there is no 



THE JEWISH BELIEF. 1 75 

ground whatever for doubting that these writ- 
ings faithfully set forth the belief of the Jews 
at the beginning of the Christian era. The 
best authority fixes the date of the Jerusalem 
Targum near the close of the second century ; 
but the force of the argument would scarcely 
-be weakened if we should concede to it even 
a later origin. The thoughts it embodies 
were the thoughts of the generations past, 
grown sacred by the lapse of years. 

Our opponents seek further to weaken the 
argument from the belief of the Jews, by 
keeping prominent the errors into which they 
had fallen, and the influences that operated 
to lead them into heretical notions. We con- 
cede that the Jews were not the best teachers 
in philosophy or religion, and that in many 
things they were both blind and obstinate; 
but this is not the pertinent fact. We do 
not believe in future punishment because the 
Jews did, nor are we concerned about the 
ground of 'their faith. The adversaries of 
this doctrine, the most intelligent of them, 
admit the fact that the Jews believed in the 
"dogma of eternal punishment," and then 
enlarge on the errors and superstition of the 



176 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

times, the absurdities of Jewish traditions, and 
their near resemblance to pagan philosophy; 
in all which they overlook the real issue, in 
that we do not hold that the doctrine is true 
because the Jews thought it true, nor for the 
reasons that induced them to accept it, but 
simply because our Savior found them believ- 
ing it, and did not contradict them, or in any 
way manifest dissent from the prevailing no- 
tion. The corruption of their faith, their 
superstition, their blindness, and the influence 
of pagan philosophy on their beliefs, have 
nothing to do with the point in hand. The 
question is, Did the Jews believe the doc- 
trine, and did Christ fail to correct them by 
teaching a different doctrine? 

Finding it impossible to deny the fact, 
Universalists assert that the Jews learned 
their notions of Hell from heathen sources; 
that they abandoned the cherished teachings 
of their ancestors and the sacred writings of 
their prophets for the silly inventions of 
pagan philosophers and the dreams of my- 
thology; and that Jesus Christ just repeated 
the popular notions of the people, without 
any protest against them as errors or against 



THE JEWISH BELIEF. 177 

their heathen origin. They tell us, as in the 
language of Dr. Williamson, in regard to 
Hades, that "our Savior fitted his discourse 
to his hearers," and "founded his parable 
precisely upon their views;" and yet they do 
not pretend to point out any contradiction he 
ever made to this popular notion, or any 
rebuke he ever administered to any one for 
believing in eternal punishment. What is all 
this better than to assert that Jesus was an 
impostor, and that the New Testament is a 
compilation of heathen fables? 

Mr. Weaver says: "A future Hell was not 
taught in the Old Testament, nor known to 
the Jews as a Scripture teaching; but only as 
a sentiment which they had learned of the 
heathen." He then asserts that Christ used 
the word in a Scripture sense, and not in a 
heathen sense. The baseless assumption that 
the Jews understood the prevailing opinion 
respecting Hell to be of heathen origin, and 
contrary to the Scriptures, is the foundation 
of his effort to break the fact that the Jews 
believed in Hell, and that Christ did not con- 
tradict them. He says, further: "If he 
[Christ] had given to it a new sense, or a 

12 



178 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

heathen sense, he would have told them of 
it. But as he used it without any explana- 
tion, w T e are left to the unavoidable conclu- 
sion that he used it in the Scriptural sense 
which all the Jews understood." (See Bible 
View, p. 70.) Here is the important admis- 
sion that Christ used the word "without any 
explanation," and therefore in the sense 
"which all the Jews understood." But if so, 
"we are left to the unavoidable conclusion" 
that he sanctioned what the Jews believed. 
Mr. Weaver's mistake lies in the assumption 
that the Jews distinguished between the 
Scripture sense of the word and the sense or 
sentiment they had learned of the heathen. 
There is not the least shadow of authority for 
this. The Jews not only knew of the doctrine 
of eternal punishment in Hell, but they be- 
lieved it; and they believed it not merely as 
a heathen sentiment, or on the authority of 
pagan philosophy, but as a divine revelation 
through their sacred books, and sanctioned 
by the traditions taught in their synagogues. 
They were the last people in the world to 
borrow doctrines from their heathen neigh- 
bors, in opposition to their own Scriptures. 



THE JEWISH BELIEF. ] 79 

If this doctrine was of heathen origin, and 
contrary to the Scriptures, the Jews neither 
knew nor believed the fact. They were not 
in the habit of receiving their doctrines from 
heathen sources, consciously at least, and if 
they did so in this instance, they would not 
have discriminated between the source of this 
and other doctrines held by them so as to say, 
This is of heathen origin and that is from the 
Holy Scriptures. And if they were deceived 
in this matter, and deceiving others, suppos- 
ing this part of their faith to be of divine 
origin and derived from the Scriptures when 
it was not, the Savior was bound, as a divine 
teacher, to break the delusion, by explaining 
the source of the error, and denouncing the 
heresy. Silence would have been criminal. 
But the Savior was not silent; neither did he 
denounce the error. He made no reference 
to the heathen origin of the dogma of eter- 
nal punishment in Gehenna. On the contrary, 
he used the same terms, and the same sym- 
bols, which the Jews employed to express 
their ideas of eternal punishment, and he 
applied them in the same way, only with 
greater emphasis, to express the if oppressive 



180 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

and dreadful judgments" that should befall 
the wicked as "the finale of human folly and 
crime." From all which the conclusion is 
inevitable that Christ found no fault with the 
Jews respecting their belief in the final pun- 
ishment of the wicked, but sanctioned their 
belief in all essential particulars. 

We say in all essential particulars, for it is 
well known that the Jews indulged in many 
fancies in regard to the location of Hell, and 
the nature of its torments, which, in the light 
of modern intelligence, are quite preposter- 
ous. While he did not explain their errors 
in philosophy, or their absurd conjectures in 
relation to incidental and minor points, he did 
not sanction them, as they were not included 
in the terms he employed, nor did they con- 
stitute the really important part of the Jewish 
belief. He sanctioned that which he affirmed, 
and nothing more. 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 181 



Chapter XL 

GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 

We come now to the passages of Scrip- 
ture in which Gehenna occurs, and 
while it may not be necessary to examine 
critically every instance of its use, we shall 
omit none that sheds light on the question in 
issue. The only object is to reach the pre- 
cise meaning of the word as intended by the 
Great Teacher. 

The first passage to be considered is Matt, 
v, 21, 22: "Ye have heard that it was said 
by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; 
and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger 
of the judgment: but I say unto you, that 
whosoever is angry with his brother without 
cause shall be in danger of the judgment; 
and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, 
shall be in danger of the council; but whoso- 
ever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of 



r82 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Gehenna — fire." Here are three offenses speci- 
fied — causeless anger, contemptuous speeches, 
and abusive epithets; and corresponding to 
these, three grades or degrees of punishment 
are indicated; namely, the judgment, the 
council, and the fire of Gehenna. Now the 
first question that arises is, Are these things 
to be taken literally, or must they be inter- 
preted in a figurative sense? If they are to 
be taken literally, the Savior did nothing 
more than point out the punishments inflicted 
by the civil courts of the nation. But this 
view can not be accepted for many reasons, 
among which are the following: 

1. There is no evidence that punishment 
by burning in the valley of Hinnom was 
practiced in the days of Christ, or that it had 
been for a long time before. 

2. The offenses specified are not such as 
would expose those guilty of them to the 
several degrees of punishment here indicated. 
These punishments were strangling, stoning, 
and burning — all capital; but the Jewish courts 
inflicted none of these for the offenses men- 
tioned. Indeed there is no evidence that 
such offenses came under the cognizance of 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 183 

the law in any way, or incurred any penalty 
whatever. 

3. The Savior was not speaking of punish- 
ments to be inflicted under the law of the 
land. So far from this, he distinguished be- 
tween the crimes and punishments under the 
Jewish law, and those about which he was 
speaking, so as to mark the difference and 
show the contrast. He may have alluded to 
the regulations of the law when he said, "Ye 
have heard that it was said by them of old 
time," as the Jews largely conformed their 
statutes to the traditions received from "them 
of old time;" but when he added with empha- 
sis, "But I say unto you" he directed atten- 
tion to something the courts did not condemn 
or punish. 

4. Christ had no authority under the law 
to say who should or who should not be 
held amenable to the secular courts, and he 
never attempted to legislate or judge in re- 
gard to such matters. When, on one occa- 
sion, he was solicited to do something of this 
nature, he rebuked the applicant sharply, 
saying, "Man, who made me a judge or di- 
vider over you?" He utterly disclaimed all 



184 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

right or purpose to meddle with the law of 
the land or with the functions of the courts. 
But in this emphatic "I say unto you," he 
asserted his right and authority over the mat- 
ters in hand; and therefore we must suppose 
him to be speaking of spiritual things, and 
of such matters of offense and punishment as 
came under his jurisdiction as king in Zion. 
With all his anxiety to get rid of punish- 
ment in the future world, Mr. Weaver rejects 
this interpretation as "too literal.-" One 
thing is certain, however, and that is, we 
must accept the passage as entirely literal, or 
abandon the literal sense altogether. He 
says, "This makes the passage too literal to 
meet my views of the Savior's teaching. It 
is very probable that he wished to warn his 
disciples against the dangers with which they 
were beset, and alluded to the horrible end 
of Jewish wickedness, by reference to the 
fire of Gehenna. But it is clear to my mind 
that these punishments of the Jewish code 
are made emblematic of God's spiritual pun- 
ishments, teaching that as the Jews punished 
their transgressors according to the degree of 
guilt, so God would be equally just. Every 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 185 

offense should meet its merited penalty." 
(Bible View, page 75.) No serious objection 
need be urged against this statement, as far 
as it goes; for it accepts the essential point 
that the literal punishments of the Jewish 
code are emblematical of God's spiritual pun- 
ishments. This carries the whole subject of 
the offenses and punishments over into the 
spiritual realm, where Christ is judge and dis- 
penser of retributions. It therefore leaves 
the further application of Mr. Weaver's idea 
of spiritual punishment in the mists of confu- 
sion and unauthorized conjecture; for he ap- 
plies this expressive phrase to the national 
calamities that came on the Jews in this 
world. We accept the statement that Ge- 
henna is the emblem of "'spiritual punish- 
ments ;" but when this author undertakes to 
restrict those spiritual punishments to this life, 
and to make them all reformatory in char- 
acter, he departs from authority and consist- 
ency as well. For it is well known that not 
only does this writer, but all others of the 
class to which he belongs, in seeking after 
the "spiritual punishments " emblematically 
set forth under the language in question, find 



1 86 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

them in the national overthrow of the Jews 
at the time Jerusalem was destroyed — punish- 
ments of a singular type as to spiritual quali- 
ties or reformatory tendencies. 

There is no reasonable doubt that this 
passage is to be interpreted as relating to 
spiritual things, and that the terms judgment, 
council, and Gehenna are to be understood as 
metaphors, pointing to spiritual punishments. 
But on this very account, as well as for other 
reasons, it is improper to understand Gehenna 
as denoting the national calamity which has 
been made to figure so largely in the dis- 
cussion of future punishment. Against any 
interpretation that makes Gehenna in any way 
express the overthrow of the Jewish nation, 
or apply to national disaster, the following 
objections appear to me to be conclusive: 

I. The offenses and punishments spoken of 
in this passage are clearly of individual, and 
not of national character. Ill tempers and 
abusive speeches are the offenses. These are 
hinderances to spiritual life, and if cherished or 
persisted in will imperil the soul, because they 
stand in the way of inward purity and of 
unselfish consecration; but these are not the 



CxEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 187 

great national crimes that brought the divine 
vengeance upon the devoted people, in the 
destruction of their temple and city, and 
in the subversion of their national polity. 
Doubtless, if the Savior, in his sermon on 
the mount, had desired to be understood as 
speaking of that coming wrath upon the na- 
tion, he would have mentioned some of the 
offenses which had become national, and 
which were leading to that consummation. 

2. In the national retribution which fol- 
lowed the national rejection of the Messiah, 
there was nothing answering to the grades of 
punishment indicated by the terms judgment, 
council, and Gehenna; nor was that great 
calamity the result of any judicial proceeding, 
or of a sentence pronounced in any council 
or any court. And just here it may be well 
to correct a misstatement found in the " Bi- 
ble View," and which is often made by those 
who deny the finality of future punishment. 
Mr. Weaver says: "The common doctrine 
is that there are no degrees of guilt ; but all 
impenitent offenders, from him who steals a 
pin to him w 7 ho murders a nation, shall suffer 
an eternity of equal torment." (Bible View, 



188 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

page 75.) The common doctrine is widely 
different from this. It does not enter into 
the secrets of the divine plans, and unfold all 
the mystery of God's methods of dealing with 
the incorrigible, but it does affirm that^in the 
final adjustment each and all will receive 
according to the deeds done in the body. It 
therefore affirms degrees of punishment in 
eternity, and we dare not doubt that God can 
punish men in the future according to the 
degrees of their guilt, as well as in this world. 
Duration is only one element in the retribu- 
tion of sin, and a consequential and not a 
primary element at that. 

3. The context shows that Christ was here 
giving directions for the regulation of per- 
sonal conduct, and particularly personal tem- 
pers and passions, in all succeeding ages, and 
stating the consequences of disregarding the 
direction given, not only to the Jews, but to 
all people ; not only at that time, but in all 
time. The language, therefore, applies to 
men during the whole period of the Gospel 
dispensation. It is a statute law in the 
Church or kingdom of Christ on earth, unre- 
pealed and unrepeatable forever; whereas, if 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 189 

it related to the national punishment of the 
Jews in the destruction of Jerusalem, it could 
only interest those who lived prior to that 
wonderful event. 

4. It will not do to make Gehenna point to 
the national overthrow of the Jews, and the 
judgment and council to minor offenses and 
punishments of a personal kind. If the pas- 
sage is figurative, it is all figurative. If Ge- 
henna is an emblem, so are the different courts 
alluded to. If one term relates to national af- 
fairs, so must all the others. But while liber- 
alists of almost every school have insisted on 
applying Gehe?ina as an emblem of national 
punishments, they have uniformly failed to 
make application of the other terms to any 
thing that ever took place on the earth. The 
truth is, the Savior, while discoursing of spir- 
itual offenses, as contrasted with mere overt 
acts of disobedience to the law, alluded to the 
council and judgment and Gehenna-fire for 
the purpose of impressing the hearer with the 
reality of those offenses, and the severity of 
divine punishments, as compared with those 
which were external and temporary. He also 
designed, undoubtedly, to intimate the gen- 



190 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

eral fact that there are degrees of punishment 
in the future state, corresponding to the dif- 
ferent measures of ill-desert, according to 
the judgment and counsel of infinite wisdom ; 
and, finding no words in the language of the 
people, through which he could convey his 
ideas of the spiritual state without the use 
of metaphors, he illustrated the whole subject 
by this reference to the Jewish courts. 

It is a very important rule for the inter- 
pretation of figurative language that requires 
us to avoid extending the comparison in the 
metaphor beyond the point of resemblance 
that suggested its use. The observance of 
this rule will lead us to accept the above 
statement as sufficient, and prevent us from 
the fruitless labor of seeking a multitude of 
correspondences between the literal and spir- 
itual in this passage, where only a single one 
was intended. If we have gathered the great 
thought of the Master in regard to sins of the 
heart, and the adjustment of punishment in the 
future state according to the grades of guilt, 
we have a sufficient explanation of the meta- 
phors used, and will do wrong to press those 
metaphors to yield the details of mode and 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 191 

method and result, which it might be grati- 
fying to understand, but which they were 
never intended to exhibit. 

The author of the " Bible View of Hell" 
makes an objection to the application of Ge- 
henna to the future state, which deserves 
notice here. It is that "the difference be- 
tween the sinfulness of saying Raca or block- 
head and fool, is hardly great enough to war- 
rant such a difference in punishment as is 
involved in the supposition " that Gehenna- 
fin is in the future. His difficulty arises 
from his confusion or misconception of the 
case. He takes it for granted that we con- 
cede, or are obliged to consider the punish- 
ments of the first and second offenses as the 
inflictions of the Jewish courts, or as necessa- 
rily in this life, and temporal. But we do 
nothing of the kind. The sins are all of the 
heart, and the punishments are all spiritual, 
and the whole scene of retribution is in eter- 
nity, not in time. This writer adds, "There 
is no proportion between the slight difference 
in guilt and the tremendous difference in pun- 
ishment." If we should allow him to make 
part of the text literal and part figurative, 



192 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

and part of the punishments temporal and 
part spiritual, there might be found some- 
thing like his wide difference and his tre- 
mendous disproportion ; but this is almost 
unpardonable blundering. The passage is all 
figurative, and none of the punishments were 
to be inflicted by the courts, and none of the 
offenses were to be estimated by their outward 
manifestations or external differences. If the 
passage is not figurative, it is not true ; for 
the courts neither strangled nor stoned men 
for saying " blockhead," any more than they 
burned them literally in the valley of Hinnom 
for saying "thou fool." We must be con- 
sistent and admit metaphors where they exist, 
and yet not force them to crawl where they 
are evidently intended to stand still. And 
as the metaphors express spiritual punish- 
ments, so the offenses named stand for the 
inward dispositions out of which they spring, 
and which are the real cause of the severities 
described. The scope of this whole discourse 
proves this, as its great aim was to turn atten- 
tion to the spirituality of the divine law, 
which applies to the thoughts of the heart as 
well as to the actions of the life. 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 193 



Chapter XII. 

GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE, CONTINUED. 

THE next occurrence of Gehenna is in a 
passage which is one of a class, similar 
language being used by our Savior on dif- 
ferent occasions. Instead of considering each 
separately, we will group these Scriptures, 
and gather from the whole the precise mean- 
ing of this word, as it was employed in these 
remarkable discourses. "And if thy right 
eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from 
thee: for it is profitable for thee that one 
of thy members should perish, and not that 
thy whole body should be cast into Gehenna. 
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, 
and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for 
thee that one of thy members should perish, 
and not that thy whole body should be cast 
into Gehenna." (Matt, v, 29, 30.) See also 
Matthew xviii, 8, 9, where occur the phrases 
13 



194 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

"everlasting fire" and Gehenna-fire, as en- 
largements on the simple word Gehenna. 
Also Mark ix, 43-48: "And if thy hand of- 
fend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to 
enter into life maimed, than having two hands 
to go into Gehenna, into the fire that never 
shall be quenched ; where their worm dieth 
not, and the fire is not quenched. And if 
thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better 
for thee to enter halt into life, than having 
two feet to be cast into Gehenna, into the fire 
that never shall be quenched; where their 
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 
And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out : 
it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom 
of God with one eye, than having two eyes, 
to be cast into Gehenna-fire: where their 
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. ,, 
There will probably be no doubt in any 
one's mind that "Gehenna" " Gehenna-fire," 
"everlasting fire," and "the fire that never 
shall be quenched," relate to the same thing, 
and that the varied expressions emphasize the 
thought expressed by the single word Ge- 
henna. These varied expressions bring out 
different phases of the punishment of Gehenna 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 195 

and mark the scope and applicatian of that 
word. On the other hand, the two phrases 
"enter into life" and "enter into the king- 
dom of God" mean the same thing, and show 
us the opposite of entering into Gehenna, 
In all these Scriptures there are two, and 
only two, opposite states described. Men do 
not "go into Gehenna" and also "enter into 
life." The one state precludes or cuts off 
the other. Then, in view of the liberalistic 
interpretations of these passages making Ge- 
henna an emblem of the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, as well as claiming that it expresses 
literal punishments under the laws of the 
nation, the following question arises for con- 
sideration: Can these Scriptures be under- 
stood either literally of the punishments 
inflicted by Jewish courts in the valley of 
Hinnom; or figuratively of the national over- 
throw of the Jews, in the destruction of their 
temple and city? 

Neither of these interpretations can be sus- 
tained, and of course they can not both be 
true. All the reasons why the passage con- 
sidered in the preceding chapter could not be 
so interpreted, apply with equal force to those 



196 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

now before us. There is no evidence that 
punishment by burning in the valley of Hin- 
nom was lawful when these words were 
spoken; if it was lawful there are no crimes 
mentioned that would expose any one to it; 
and he who uttered these words was not the 
judge in such matters, and was not defining 
the secular law, nor predicting the action of 
Jewish courts. Neither was he speaking of 
offenses of a national character, but of those 
that were personal ; and although the degrees 
of punishment are not illustrated or recog- 
nized, as in the former instance, the language 
was evidently intended for universal applica- 
tion, and should not be restricted to Judea, 
nor to the period prior to the destruction of 
Jerusalem. It is a permanent law of the 
kingdom of God, applicable to the Church in 
all the world, and through all the ages, fixing 
the terms of discipleship, and proclaiming 
every-where and to all people the absolute 
indispensableness of self-denial. The senti- 
ment is plain, and easily comprehended and 
applied. It is that if any one will not deny 
himself of all sinful gratifications, though it 
require a sacrifice as dear or as painful as the 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 197 

cutting off of a hand or a foot, or the pluck- 
ing out of an eye, he shall not enter into life 
eternal in the kingdom of God, but on the 
contrary he shall be cast into Gehenna — "into 
the fire that shall never be quenched," 
"where their worm dieth not, and the fire is 
not quenched. ,, This is the final doom of 
the wicked. So far as revelation is concerned, 
no ray of light gleams from beyond the 
eternal burnings ; and it must not be for- 
gotten for a moment that our inquiry is with 
reference to the voice of God in his written 
Word. We are not looking for the where- 
fore, nor for the result of this fire ; nor yet 
for its locality, or its material or moral re- 
lations. The point in view is the simple fact 
that these Scriptures, in harmony with the 
tenor of divine teaching, point to an "ever- 
lasting fire " as the result of sinful living, to 
the rejection of Christ and his salvation. A 
few reflections will confirm this interpretation. 
1. The "life" mentioned in these Scrip- 
tures is the opposite of Gehenna. To go or 
be cast into Gehenna, is to lose this "life;" 
and to "enter into life" is to escape Ge- 
henna. Theologians of liberalistic views have 



198 . NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

both seen and felt the force of this fact, and 
have endeavored to obviate it — possibly to 
their own satisfaction ; but they have never 
removed the difficulty. In this interest we 
have been told that the "life" is spiritual; 
that it is enjoyed on earth, and that, there- 
fore, it does not necessitate an interpretation 
that would carry the opposite conditions of 
humanity, described as "entering into life," 
on one hand, or "going into Gehenna" on the 
other, over into eternity for their realization. 
But spiritual life — that which comes to the 
soul by faith in Jesus Christ — is not the op- 
posite of burning to death in the valley of 
Hinnom, nor of any physical torture or pun- 
ishment whatsoever; neither is it, in any 
intelligible sense, the opposite of the national 
calamity of the Jews. The real antithesis to 
the life of faith is the spiritual death out of 
which the soul emerges when it "passes from 
death unto life, " in conversion. 

2. It is clearly impossible for any one to 
1 'enter into life," in the sense of these pas- 
sages, and yet be " cast into Gehenna." But 
if the " life " is nothing more than the life of 
faith on the earth, there is no such impos- 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 199 

sibility in the case ; for it was clearly possi- 
ble for believers, in the full enjoyment of 
spiritual life, to suffer any temporal calamity 
or judgment the word might import, and if 
the allusion was to such tortures as the courts 
might inflict the disciples of Christ were quite 
as liable to them as any other class of people. 
Spiritual life is not a protection against phys- 
ical suffering, especially in such seasons of bit- 
ter persecution as followed the first preaching 
of the Gospel of Christ. And so, also, if the 
life is allowed to be eternal, and to pertain 
strictly to the immortal state, as it undoubtedly 
does, a person might be cast into Gehenna, 
literally, and burn to death, or suffer any 
temporal calamity the word may be supposed 
to indicate, if it be only temporal, and 
"then enter into life," in the eternal king- 
dom, just as readily and triumphantly as if 
no Gehenna had stood in the way. All such 
interpretations as make the Gehenna a tem- 
porary calamity, whether it be taken literally 
or figuratively, or made to represent personal 
or national experiences, will destroy the an- 
tithesis and break up the opposition between 
the states or conditions contemplated. 



200 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

3. Self-denial is here enjoined as the safe- 
guard, and as the only safeguard, against 
the fire of Gehenna. But self-denial did not 
save the first Christians from the most relent- 
less persecutions. Many of them passed 
through " fiery trials" equal to any temporal 
calamity Gehenna could symbolize. They 
were brought before governors and kings, 
councils and courts, and were imprisoned, 
beheaded, stoned, sawn asunder, and burned; 
so that if Gehenna means "temporal calami- 
ties and distresses," these humble followers 
of Christ passed through its hottest burnings, 
in spite of their self-denial and faithfulness. 
On the other hand, both prior to the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem and since that event, mul- 
titudes have refused to practice self-denial, and 
yet have neither been burned in the valley 
of Hinnom, nor suffered any temporal ca- 
lamity. 

4. If we literalize Gehenna, so as to con- 
fine its application to the Jews, we should 
literalize the other parts of the passages, 
even to the cutting off of the hand and the 
foot and the plucking out of the eye. Per- 
haps no one will insist upon this; but why 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 201 

not? Did not Christ speak as definitely and 
as positively of the body, and of maiming 
the body, as he did of Gehenna ? Then why 
take the latter so literally as to apply it only 
to this world and to the Jews, and not do the 
same for the other expressions ? But if it be 
true that the plucking out of the eye is a 
figurative expression, signifying rigid and 
painful self-denial, so also is it true that Ge- 
henna is a figurative term, a metaphor, signi- 
fying that extreme punishment which must 
ultimately overtake the self-indulgent sinner. 
This is enough. The great thought of the 
Redeemer is brought out, and its importance 
justifies the repetition, which is so inexplica- 
ble on other grounds. 

In addition to all this, it might be easily 
shown that our " liberalistic" friends do not 
entertain such high conceptions of spiritual 
life on earth, as that the rigid self-denial here 
contemplated is essential to the attainment of 
it. There is in the so-called liberalism of the 
times but little demand for cutting off hands 
or feet or plucking out offending eyes, and 
certainly not as conditions precedent to the 
life of faith which that system holds up as the 



202 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

best attainment in spiritual freedom. But 
the truth is, the "life" mentioned in these 
Scriptures as the opposite of Gehenna, is not 
a life that belongs to this world. It is a life 
beyond the mortal state, beyond the domain 
of sin and death ; a life which Gehenna can 
not destroy, because it is not entered till 
all danger of "the fire that shall never be 
quenched" is past forever. It is the life 
reached by walking in the "narrow way." 
(Matt, vii, 13, 14.) This "walk" is to con- 
tinue till the need of self-denial is over, 
and then introduce the pilgrim into the life 
which is beyond. It is the Christian's life 
on earth, the life of self-denial and cross- 
bearing which covers the existence here, 
and closes only with the close of probation. 
The life to which it "leads" is the goal 
of this ; and as it is at the termination of the 
"narrow way," it is necessarily beyond the 
grave. The life of faith is entered not at the 
close but at the beginning of the life of self- 
denial. This is the inspiration of the walk 
in the narrow way. It links itself with cross- 
bearing. It is the power that strikes off the 
offending member, and gathers strength by 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 203 

the self-denial it demands and prompts. The 
way is so "narrow" that every evil desire 
and unholy impulse, every constitutional or 
besetting sin, must be conquered in order 
that we may keep in it. And it "leadeth 
unto life." That life crowns the struggling 
soul. The reverse of this is a dark pic- 
ture. It is a "broad way" — a w r ay broad 
enough to admit the whole brood of sensual 
delights. It requires no self-denying care, no 
cross-bearing, no conflict with self; but it 
"leadeth to destruction." This is the oppo- 
site of life, the synonym of Gehenna. Turn 
as we may, we are compelled to face the 
unavoidable conclusion that the "life" which 
is entered as the result of self-denial, and the 
Gehenna which awaits the self indulgent are 
both in the state beyond probation. It mat- 
ters not that we do not see all the reasons 
why this particular word should be chosen to 
express the outcome of the life of sin, or 
why the imagery of the valley of Hinnom 
should picture the horrors of the retribution 
in store for the ungodly, the fact is before 
us — the stern, unyielding fact, which no dex- 
terity of interpretation can change, and no 



204 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

power of criticism can destroy. Nor does it 
diminish the force of the fact that we are 
unable so to trace this imagery in its appli- 
cation to the spiritual state as to mark the 
exact significance of each of its parts, or to 
comprehend the nature of the punishment 
symbolized or the agencies of its infliction. 
It seems to accord with the wisdom of God 
that in this life we should know spiritual 
things only "in part." This is true of the 
good and of the heavenly state; and much 
more might we expect it to be so of the world 
of darkness and death. That which remains 
unrevealed would serve no practical purpose 
if made known. We are warned of the fact 
and hopelessness of perdition, and further 
light upon the dreadfulness of the condition 
of the lost would not increase the motive to 
obedience and purity of life. If the light 
which is in us be darkness, additional light 
would enhance the darkness. 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 205 



Chapter XIII. 

GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE, CONTINUED. 

THE Scriptures we are now to examine 
are so definite in their statements and 
many-sided in their bearing on the subject in 
hand, that they may very properly be taken 
as the most explicit proofs of the position we 
have assumed. Their testimony is clear, 
pointed, decisive. Of course, it has been 
challenged, and earnest, persistent efforts have 
been made to counteract or nullify the influ- 
ence of this testimony on the issue pending; 
so that we can not proceed without notic- 
ing what "liberalists" have said upon these 
Scriptures. 

The following are the passages: "And 
fear not them that kill the body, but are not 
able to kill the soul ; but rather fear him 
which is able to destroy both soul and body 
in Gehenna" (Matt, x, 28.) "And I say 



206 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

unto you, my friends, be not afraid of them 
that kill the body, and after that, have no 
more that they can do. But I will forewarn 
you whom ye shall fear ; fear him which, 
after he hath killed, hath power to cast into 
Gehenna; yea, I say unto you, fear him." 
(Luke xii, 4, 5.) 

The first point that strikes the reader of 
these passages is, that the casting into Ge- 
henna takes place after death — after the body 
is killed. This alone sheds a flood of light 
upon the whole subject. It stands out as a 
fact, broad and palpable, confronting every 
caviler with the distinctness of its signifi- 
cance, and commanding attention by the 
directness of its assertion. And there is no 
possible evasion of this speaking fact. The 
death which it is " after," is the death of 
the body. "After that "—"after he hath 
killed;" after he hath killed the body. Ge- 
henna is, therefore, after death. And the 
next point worthy of remark is, that "both 
soul and body" may be cast into Gehenna. 
This is full of meaning, as we shall see further 
along. It implies the resurrection, or the 
reunion of soul and body after death, and 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 207 

after the dissolution of the body in the grave, 
and the abiding of the soul in Hades until 
the day of final doom. That reunion will 
come, and then also will come the last ca- 
lamity that shall befall the wicked, the finale 
of human folly and crime. 

But we must hear the opposers of this 
doctrine, the " liberalists," whose sensitive 
natures are shocked at God's own truth, so 
that they must needs soften it to their liking, 
or disbelieve it outright. We shall look at 
specimens of their interpretations, enough to 
bring out all the points, and exhibit the 
strength of their opposition to the natural 
import of the language, and point out the 
incorrectness of their positions and the failure 
of their criticisms. 

Their first aim is to strike at the meaning 
of the word "soul." The object of this is 
not always apparent, but since importance is 
attached to it we must not overlook what has 
been said. The following are the words of a 
distinguished advocate of Universalism, whose 
opposition to the doctrine of future punish- 
ment secured him a wn'de reputation, and the 
highest respect of his class: "It is plain, 



208 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

then, that this word soul, in this place, does 
mean the animal life, and not the immortal 
spirit. Now, I wish you to bear in mind this 
definition of the meaning of the term soul 
here, and we will inquire, What is meant by 
destroying both soul and body in Hell {Ge- 
henna), and who have power to do this? 
'And fear not them which kill the body' — ■ 
those minor authorities which have power 
only to take the life — but 'fear him' — that 
power or tribunal that has not only power to 
kill the body, to destroy the animal life, but 
to burn the body in Gehenna. Now mark, 
these were minor authorities that had no 
authority over the body after the life was 
taken ; they had power to condemn the indi- 
vidual to be stoned to death, to be strangled 
to death, or to take his life in any manner 
whereby the animal life might be destroyed. 
But here was a power that could burn the 
body, destroy both soul and body in this 
Gehenna — Hell. There are powers among us 
that can destroy the animal life. They can 
hang up the culprit and there let him rest. 
And, in addition, they can hand over the body 
to the surgeons for dissection. So there is a 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 209 

destruction of both the animal life and of 
the body. Well, thus it was with respect to 
the Sanhedrim; they had power not only to 
destroy the animal life, but to burn the body 
in the valley of the son of Hinnom. Such, 
my friends, is the meaning of this text; it 
has no reference to the condition of the im- 
mortal spirit in the future world." So said 
Mr. Doolittle, and multitudes of "liberalists" 
have rejoiced in the genius which devised so 
profound an exposition! 

It is humiliating to feel obliged to make 
serious answer to a statement so futile and 
self-contradictory, and yet it is put forth as 
real argument, and widely accepted as break- 
ing the force of the testimony of these Scrip- 
tures in favor of the final perdition of the 
wicked. Others may gloss the position with 
finer rhetoric, burying the idea under a tor- 
rent of words, but adding nothing to the 
thought. The leading point is the definition 
of the word "soul." It is said to mean the 
"animal life." There is a purpose in this, 
because the "soul" can be lost, and here it 
appears capable of going into Gehenna after 
the body is dead. But let us read the pas- 



2IO NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

sage with this definition substituted for soul: 
"And fear not them that kill the body, but are 
not able to kill the animal life!" Every one 
sees the absurdity of this, because every one 
knows that the body can not be killed with- 
out destroying the animal life. But since 
there is a power that can kill the body with- 
out killing the soul, the word soul must mean 
something distinct from the body and dis- 
tinct also from the animal life. It is true 
that in a few instances the word rendered 
soul in this place is rendered life, but never 
animal life. An example is found in John xii, 
25: "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and 
he that hateth his life in this world, shall 
keep it unto life eternal. " This teaches the 
necessity of self-denial here in order to ob- 
tain life eternal hereafter. But the word 
pseuche, rendered "life" in this place, and 
soul in the passages under consideration, is 
the proper word for soul, while zoe is the 
proper word for life. It is easily seen that 
pseuche is rendered life as a secondary or 
metaphorical meaning, in view of the fact that 
the soul remains with the body only while the 
life lasts. We are accustomed to speak of 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 21 1 

death, or the giving up of life, as the giving 
up of the soul. Popular thought and popular 
expression would have it that the soul ani- 
mates the body, and is the life of the body, 
but this is neither physiologically nor theo- 
logically accurate. The soul survives the 
shock that prostrates the body to the dust, 
or the language of Christ is meaningless. 
Men are able to kill the bod}*, but are not 
able to kill the soul. 

The next point has reference to the object 
of fear, or rather to the person or power the 
disciples were forewarned to fear. Liberalists 
prefer not to believe that God is represented as 
a terror or dread to the wicked. They see in 
this sentiment possibilities of great hazard to 
their cherished notions. Hence, as in the 
above exposition, comparisons are made be- 
tween minor and major authorities of the Jews. 
Some had limited power, and others unlim- 
ited ; some could destroy the life, but could 
not destroy the body, while others could dis- 
pose of the body after it was dead. The dis- 
ciples ought not, therefore, to be afraid of 
the minor authorities, but only of the Sanhe- 
drim ! Is not this trifling? And yet we 



212 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

encounter it as sober criticism, speaking for 
superior learning and advanced thought! In 
order to agree with this exposition, our Sav- 
ior should have reversed his statement, and 
said, "Fear not them that kill the soul — the 
animal life — but are not able to dispose of 
the body after it is dead!" 

But whom should we fear? Upon this 
point our "liberal" friends are not agreed, 
and therefore we shall have to notice more 
than one answer. As seen above, we are told 
it is the Sanhedrim, or great council of the 
Jews, which had power over the body after it 
was dead, and might burn it in the valley of 
Hinnom. The absurdity of this has already 
appeared; but, for the reason that much stress 
is often laid upon it, a little further attention 
to it must be indulged. The context is ad- 
duced with much confidence to show that the 
disciples were not to be afraid of God, who 
cared for the falling sparrow, and much more 
for them, but that they were to fear the San- 
hedrim, whose power was so great that it 
could destroy the body after it was dead. But 
the context shows that Christ was sending 
forth his disciples to preach the kingdom 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 213 

of God, and giving them suitable instructions 
and encouragement for their mission, warn- 
ing them of dangers to be encountered, and 
telling them how to conduct themselves. He 
told them of the persecutions they would 
meet, but they were not to desist from their 
work on account of any treatment they might 
receive at the hands of men. He said, "But 
beware of men; for they will deliver you up to 
the councils, and they will scourge you in their 
synagogues; and ye shall be brought before 
governors and kings for my sake, for a testi- 
mony against them and the Gentiles." Then, 
after explaining how they should answer their 
accusers, and expect divine assistance in their 
trials, he encouraged them as follows: * 4 Fear 
them not therefore; for there is nothing cov- 
ered that shall not be revealed; and hid that 
shall not be known. What I tell you in 
darkness, that speak ye in light; and what 
ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon 
the housetops. And fear not them which 
kill the body, but are not able to kill the 
soul; but rather fear him which is able to 
destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. 
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? 



214 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

and one of them shall not fall on the ground 
without your Father. But the very hairs of 
your head are all numbered. Fear ye not 
therefore; ye are of more value than many 
sparrows." These several expressions, "Be- 
ware of men," "Fear them not therefore," 
"Fear not them which kill the body," "Fear 
ye not therefore," all relate to earthly pow- 
ers, including governors, kings, councils, San- 
hedrim and all. The disciples were thus ex- 
pressly commanded not to be afraid of any 
earthly power whatever, whether small or 
great, and for the reason that these powers 
could do nothing more than kill the body. 
There was one who could do more, and he 
was watching them and caring for them, 
and would be with them in all danger, but 
they must not offend him. It was better to 
die than to disobey God. They must there- 
fore maintain their integrity in spite of kings 
and governors, in spite of councils and tor- 
tures, in spite of stoning or strangling or 
burning to death, whether in the valley of 
the son of Hinnom or anywhere else. They 
were even to hate their own lives in this 
world, that they might keep them unto life 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 215 

eternal in the world to come. What, then, 
in view of all this, induces men to assert that 
these disciples were to discriminate between 
earthly tribunals, and fear one only and not 
the others? If there is any meaning in the 
Savior's words, they are to be taken as en- 
couragement not to fear any earthly power, 
but to commit soul and body to him who cares 
for sparrows, and numbers the hairs of the 
head, and is able to save the soul, even when 
the body perishes. Interpreted thus the lan- 
guage is pertinent and forcible. 

But, as before intimated, this interpretation 
is not satisfactory to all "liberalists." Even 
Universalists attempt another. They some- 
times admit that God was to be feared, be- 
cause he was able to destroy both soul and 
body. But this, to them, is dangerous ground, 
and they step carefully upon it. The admis- 
sion necessitates a different view of the entire 
passage, which we have in the language of 
T. B. Thayer, as follows: " If you are moved 
by the selfish consideration of fear to abandon 
the Gospel in order to save your lives (as 
Peter was afterward tempted to do), then to 
be consistent, you ought to fear the power 



216 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

which can do the most injury. And this 
surely is God, who can bring destruction 
and death not only on the body but on the 
soul also, and that amid the most terrible 
of judgments. And to picture the dread ful- 
ness of this destruction more vividly to their 
minds, he uses the well-known symbol of 
Gehenna, or the valley of Hinnom, the syn- 
onym of all that was horrible in the mind of 
the Jew." (History of Endless Punishment, 
page 1 08.) 

This paraphrase will do very well, if it be 
kept in mind that the destruction of soul and 
body, so vividly pictured to the mind by 
the familiar symbol of Gehenna, was after 
death ; but this application Mr. Thayer omits. 
He insists that Gehenna symbolizes only tem- 
poral judgments, which, after all, could only 
kill the body, and Could not kill the soul. 
But men could do this ; and men were the 
agents in the very judgments which this au- 
thor supposes to be intended. The destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem w r as the work of men, 
though Providence permitted it, and used the 
evil passions of human hearts in accomplish- 
ing his own purposes. And in all that 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 217 

terrible siege and carnage, there was not a 
single agency that could destroy a soul after 
the body was killed. 

Mr. Thayer virtually acknowledges the 
weakness of his statement at this point, and 
intimates that the Savior only mentioned a 
possible case — that God could destroy both 
soul and body after death, and therefore 
was to be feared, though there was not the 
slightest danger that he would do such a 
thing! He would have the Son of man, un- 
der these solemn circumstances, warning his 
disciples to peril their lives in his cause, and 
holding a scarecrow before them as an inspi- 
ration to fidelity! After admitting that the 
disciples were charged to fear God because 
he was able to destroy both soul and body, 
Mr. Thayer continues: "In the next words 
he proceeds to tell them that really they 
have no cause to fear either God or men." 
How is this? Did he conclude to withdraw 
the brutum fulmen? Had he not said, "I 
will forewarn you whom ye shall fear?" And 
had he not emphasized this, and made it a 
positive command by adding, "Yea, I say 
unto you, fear him?" Are we to believe 



218 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

that he did this, and then immediately turned 
round and told them that this was all a sham, 
a mere supposititious case, and that there was 
in reality no cause to fear either God or 
men? Verily this style of "liberal" exposi- 
tion needs the charity that covers a multitude 
of sins. 

But Mr. Thayer's next remark is a very 
good one; "So long as they did their duty, 
God, who provided for the sparrows, and num- 
bered the hairs of their heads in the watchful- 
ness of his love, would surely protect them." 
Yes, his unfluctuating love would not fail, 
and their devotion to duty would meet its 
reward, even though the body should fall, 
and life itself be given up. We would em- 
phasize the first clause of Mr. Thayer's sen- 
tence, and give it cordial indorsement. But 
how crooked is error! His next sentence is 
most remarkable. It is this: "And then, as 
if to convince them that what he had said 
was only a supposition, and not a fact, he 
says, 'Fear ye not therefore; ye are of more 
value than many sparrows.' " The scarecrow 
theory is not abandoned. Truly, "so long- 
as they did their duty," they need not be 



GEHENNA—SCRIPTURE USE. 219 

afraid of men; for the worst that could hap- 
pen would not destroy the soul, but only 
kill the body, while he who cares for the 
sparrows would save them eternally. And 
"so long as they did their duty, " they need 
not be afraid of God ; their fear was not to 
take that form ; for there was no danger that 
God would destroy them soul and body in 
Gehenna if they stood fast in their integrity. 
But how does this prove that what the Savior 
had been telling them was "supposition, and 
not a fact." 

This attempt to make out that the allusion 
to the possible destruction of soul and body 
in Hell after death is "a supposition and 
not a fact" — a mere scarecrow — is a confes- 
sion that the language of Christ, strictly in- 
terpreted in its most natural sense, does 
convey the idea of a final punishment after 
death, or in eternity. Else why hold that the 
real idea is a "supposition, and not a fact?" If 
the language meant simply a temporal calamity, 
no resort to the idea of a mere " supposition " 
would be thought of or cherished for a mo- 
ment. Yes, here we have it at last — the 
culmination of liberalistic criticism — the doc- 



220 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. - 

trine of the eternal perdition of ungodly men 
is taught in the New Testament, but only as 
"a supposition, not as a fact!" But what 
influence upon the mind of the disciples are 
we to suppose this announcement would 
have, if accompanied by the assurance that 
the power to destroy the soul and body after 
death was only an idea, that it was a power 
which could never be exercised? To appeal 
to the existence of such a power was a mock- 
ery, if it was only a supposition. The argu- 
ment runs thus: " Eternal punishment is a 
possibility; that is, God is able to inflict it, 
and appeal is made to this ability to inspire 
fear in the hearts of men ; but, then, it must 
be distinctly understood that there is in 
reality no danger and no cause of fear!" 

But this author is afraid of annihilation, 
and argues on this wise, in a note on page 
106: "If it teaches what is certain, and not 
what is possible only, it necessitates the doc- 
trine of annihilation." The supposed anni- 
hilation is in the word "destroy," and that 
word comes as near annihilation, and neces- 
sitates the doctrine just as much, if the Ge- 
henna relates to mundane punishment, as if 



GEHENNA— SGRIPTURE USE. 221 

it symbolizes punishment after death. The 
destruction of soul and body is predicated as 
positively in one case as the other ; and we 
do not understand that any claim is set up 
that temporal judgments are only supposi- 
tions. This writer is too "liberal;" he has 
overloaded his cannon, and falls under the 
rebound. In order to avoid "annihilation- 
ism," which he does not avoid, he represents 
the Savior as exhorting the disciples with one 
breath to fear God, because he is able to de- 
stroy them soul and body, and with the next 
breath trying to persuade them that they 
have no cause to fear either God or man ! 
But to all unbiased minds, the very fact that 
the Savior told the disciples what God was 
able to do with them, as a reason why they 
should fear and obey him, is positive proof 
that there was danger of incurring that iden- 
tical retribution. 

But even this interpretation, this make-be- 
lieve theory, fails to satisfy the enemies of the 
doctrine of eternal punishment ; and so they 
have another. At all hazards they must es- 
cape the idea of punishment in Gehenna after 
death. If it were only the recognition of 



222 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

suffering in Hades, the case would not be so 
serious. They do admit that, and without 
fatal results, for they can fall back upon the 
ultimate destruction of Hades, when it shall 
deliver up its inhabitants, as it surely will, 
in the resurrection of the dead, and assert 
their restoration ; but there is no destruction 
of Gehenna, The Bible is silent on that sub- 
ject. Those "cast into Gehenna" do not 
come out again, so far as any hint is given. 
What then must be done? The language is 
plain, that whatever destruction in Gehenna 
means, it takes place after the body is killed; 
and we have all along supposed that killing 
the body meant death. We assume this, and 
proceed as if the position were uncontradicted, 
but it is not. Liberalists have discovered 
that it means nothing of the kind! To ad- 
mit that to "kill the body" means the death 
of the body, would still leave the way open 
to conclude that the casting into Gehenna, 
after the body is killed, means a Gehenna 
after death. This would show that this ter- 
rible calamity relates to the future world — 
the very thing to be avoided. 

But what can be meant by the word "kill" 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 223 

in this wonderful Scripture, and by the 
phrase, " after he hath killed?" Rev. G. S. 
Weaver comes to the rescue here and tells 
us all about it. Hear him: "By the word 
'kill' here he doubtless meant just what he 
did by the word 'scourge' a few verses before, 
when speaking of the same men." But then 
the disciples were not to be afraid of scourg- 
ing; and if the word "kill" means scourge, 
it means the same when applied to the action 
of Him, who, after he hath scourged (killed), 
hath power to cast into Gehenna. But God 
did not scourge the bodies of men. And it 
would be difficult to find any who could 
"scourge" the body, but could not "scourge" 
the soul; and not less difficult to find who 
could scourge the body, and after that have 
"no more that they could do." But this 
astute critic, while searching the context for 
that word "scourge," used of these same 
men, might have found, a little nearer the 
text, too, the following: "And the brother 
shall deliver up the brother to death, and the 
father the child ; and the children shall rise 
up against their parents, and cause them to 
be put to death." If Mr. Weaver was really 



224 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

anxious to find the meaning of the word 
"kill" by consulting the connection, why 
did he go back of this verse and select the 
word "scourge?" Does that word express 
all the persecutions to which the followers of 
Christ were liable? If so, putting to death 
means "scourging/' and all the New Tes- 
tament says of martyrdom is reduced to 
"scourging!" Such a defense ought to bring 
suspicion upon any doctrine. 

But Mr. Weaver does not believe that 
God was to be feared because he was able to 
destroy both soul and body in Gehenna after 
death. Neither does he agree with his breth- 
ren who hold that the Sanhedrim was. the 
power that was able to cast into Gehenna 
after the body was killed. He has discovered 
that the Jews, in our Savior's time, had no 
right to inflict capital punishment, they being 
subject to the Roman power. He therefore 
contends that the disciples were commanded 
not to fear the Jewish authorities, but to 
stand in awe of the Romans! Thus he par- 
aphrases: "Fear not them which have power 
to scourge and torture the body, but have 
not power to take life; but rather fear him 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 225 

(the Roman governor) who has power to de- 
stroy life and body in Gehenna." (Bible 
View of Hell, pp. 77, 78). 

Unfotunately for this interpretation, the 
disciples had just been notified that they 
would be "scourged in the synagogues/' and 
"be brought before governors and kings," 
and these they were not to fear. And inas- 
much as there were no governors except Ro- 
man governors before whom they could be 
brought, they were positively commanded 
not to fear the Roman governor ! They were 
to be arrainged by their own countrymen, the 
Jews, "for a testimony against them and the 
Gentiles;" and their zeal was not to abate 
even though they encountered the power of 
the Romans, or any earthly tribunal whatso- 
ever. They were to endure scourging and 
torture, and to be "put to death" without 
flinching. They were to hate their own lives 
also, esteeming the love of Christ better than 
father, mother, wife, or children. But if so, 
what folly to claim that they were to fear 
the Roman power because it could kill them! 
This notion that the Roman governor was to 
be feared is useless without the definition of 
*5 



226 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

the word "kill," which has been shown to 
be without support and positively absurd. 

Does the reader say to himself that these 
quibbles are too frivolous to deserve refu- 
tation? It seems to me that he must; and 
yet these very criticisms are made and these 
ridiculous positions assumed by learned men, 
leaders of public thought in the relentless 
warfare "liberalism" is making against the 
faith of the Church in regard to eternal ret- 
ributions. Therefore nothing that bears on 
the meaning of these Scriptures, or on the 
positions of the parties to this controversy, 
should be deemed beneath our notice. My 
purpose has been to follow the tortuous 
course of "liberalistic " exposition far enough 
to reveal its animus, and to show the lengths 
to which the adversaries of the doctrine of 
future punishment will go, and the vagaries 
they will accept, rather than submit to the 
plain testimony of Christ. Such attempts to 
twist the meaning of these Scriptures reveal 
the stubbornness of the opposition, and pro- 
claim its weakness. 

The outcome of this inquiry is stated in 
few words. The Savior pointed his disciples 



GEHENNA— SCRIPTURE USE. 227 

to all the persecutions to which they would 
be exposed — to scourging, torture, and death, 
whether at the hands of Jews or Gentiles, 
whether by law or without law; and in full 
view of all that could be done to them by 
ferocious enemies, stirred to madness by furi- 
ous passions, he told them to fear no earthly 
power which could kill the body, and after 
that could do no more; but to fear God, who, 
after he hath killed, can cast into Gehenna. 
What language could more positively declare 
a Hell beyond the grave ? 

But when the body is killed, the soul sep- 
arates from it, and enters Hades, not Gehenna, 
while the body molders into dust. True, 
but "the end cometh," in the which the 
graves will give up the dead, and death and 
Hades will deliver up their dead, and then 
soul and body will be cast into Gehenna. 
Nothing harmonizes apparent discrepancies 
like the simple truth. 



228 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 



Chapter XIV. 

THE LAKE OF FIRE. 

THE next point in our inquiry reaches to 
the end of things. It takes us down 
the ages to the consummation. We must 
therefore deal with mysteries, and follow 
glimmerings of light, and, perchance, frag- 
ments of truth. Of course we move cau- 
tiously, but we may move, and we must. 
The symbols of revelation speak to us, and 
will be heard. 

There is a "lake of fire"— at least this 
language is in the Bible, and it means some- 
thing. Well for us if we give it the meaning 
with which the Holy Spirit has invested it ! 
To do this we must not be wise above what 
is written, nor flinch from the results involved, 
however stern. 

Gehenna is the theme. This is beyond 
death. Has it anv connection with the "lake 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 229 

of fire?" My proposition is, Gehenna, as used 
by our Lord, represents the same punishment, 
the same state and doom of the wicked, that 
is symbolized in the " Apocalypse," by the 
"lake of fire," and the "second death." 

This does not mean that Gehenna is an 
emblem of the lake of fire. Both are sym- 
bols. At least Gehenna is used metaphor- 
ically, the name of a literal valley on earth, 
passing over to a state or place of punish- 
ment in the future, of which identical punish- 
ment the lake of fire is a symbol. Each 
pictures to the mind the same outcome of 
the life of sin, the ultimate and irreversible 
perdition of ungodly men. 

This proposition will not be seriously ques- 
tioned by Universalists or liberalists of any 
school. Their opposition is to the application 
of the symbols. The necessities of their case 
oblige them to seek an application of these 
symbols to something this side of the eternal 
state, and their ingenuity has been taxed to 
the point of desperation in the pursuit of 
something that will answer the purpose. 
How well or how poorly they have succeeded 
we shall see as we advance. 



230 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

In the Scriptures already considered we 
have found the same punishment indicated by 
the following terms and phrases : " Gehe7tna" 
" Gehenna fire " "everlasting fire," "the fire 
that shall never be quenched ;" and to these 
is added the significant allusion to the valley 
of Hinnom, the emblem of all that is horrible, 
"where their worm dieth not, and the fire is 
not quenched." Then, passing over to the 
period when the Son of man shall sit on the 
throne of his glory, and all nations shall be 
gathered before him, and he shall divide 
them as a shepherd divideth the sheep from 
the goats, and pronounce the final sentence 
against the wicked, we have that sentence in 
these words: "Depart from me, ye cursed, 
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels." (Matt, xxv, 41.) Now, we 
think there can be no doubt that this "ever- 
lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels," is the same, and means the same 
thing, as the "everlasting fire" and the " Ge- 
henna-fire" in the passages above. Of course, 
questions are raised on this passage about the 
coming of Christ, the nature of the gather- 
ing of the nations, the character of the judg- 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 231 

ment described, and all that; but, passing 
all these, we now hold our thought on the 
single point that the " everlasting fire, pre- 
pared for the devil and his angels/' mean 
what it may, is the Gehenna-fire of the other 
Scriptures. This being settled, as settled it is 
in all unbiased minds, then the next point is ; 
that this "fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels," is the same in meaning as "the lake 
of fire" in the book of Revelation. That 
this is true, is evident from the following : 
"And the devil that deceived them was cast 
into the lake of fire and brimstone, where 
the beast and the false prophet are, and shall 
be tormented day and night forever and 
ever." (Rev. xx, 10.) 

We are not now studying the nature or 
significance of these symbols nor their lo- 
cality, but simply their relation to each other, 
and the identity of their import. It is a 
question of fact, to be determined by the 
nature of the case, by the similarity of ex- 
pression and use, and by the unreasonable- 
ness of the supposition that such striking 
s)nnbols, so nearly alike and relating to the 
same classes, and having the same uses, 



232 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

should not have the same final application 
and meaning. The devil is "cast into the 
lake of fire" — can there, then, be any doubt 
that this is the fire, "the everlasting fire," 
prepared for him? The beast and the false 
prophet are there, and all that may be desig- 
nated as "his angels" will have their part in 
that lake ; then how can it be otherwise than 
that this is the "everlasting fire prepared for 
the devil and his angels?" It seems prepos- 
terous, and even impossible, to doubt the fact 
here insisted upon. And yet if it be true, it 
brings the subject of Gehenna into such a 
light that its relation to the period beyond 
death, and beyond both the resurrection and 
the judgment, can no more be questioned. 
Gehenna, as we have seen, is not Hades, is 
not in Hades, is no part of Hades, and comes 
into the scenes of human destiny only as 
Hades goes out. Death and Hades deliver 
up their dead before the judgment, and after 
the judgment they are cast into the "lake 
of fire," which is Gehenna. 

This point will bear repeating. In it cen- 
ters the whole interest of this argument. 
Upon this single fact hinges much of the 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 233 

great debate concerning human destiny. To 
be cast into ''the lake of fire" is the last 
calamity. It is "the second death." And 
is not the second death subsequent to the 
resurrection, and therefore in the future state? 
The following Scripture will determine : " And 
the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; 
and death and Hades delivered up the dead 
which were in them ; and they were judged 
every man according to their works. And 
death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. 
This is the second death. And whosoever 
was not found written in the book of life was 
cast into the lake of fire." (Rev. xx, 13-15.) 
This passage has been considered before, and 
the order of events noted, but we must look 
again. I. The great white throne appears, 
the emblem of judgment. 2. Heaven and 
earth flee away ; the visible creation passes out 
of sight. 3. The dead, small and great, arise. 
All the receptacles of the dead, whether of 
body or soul, whether earth and sea, or 
Hades, the invisible world of spirits, deliver 
up their dead. 4. The judgment proceeds; 
the books — the records of Divine Providence 
and human life — are opened, and every man's 



234 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

real character is declared. 5. The ungodly 
are condemned — formally, judicially, as they 
have been morally — and sentenced, "Depart 
from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre- 
pared for the devil and his angels. " 6. The 
sentence is executed. Death and Hades, and 
"whosoever was not found written in the 
book of life," were "cast into the lake of 
fire. ,, "This is the second death." If the 
delivering up of the dead, here mentioned, is 
the resurrection of the dead, there is no 
escape from the conclusion that Gehenna, the 
lake of fire, and the second death, are all be- 
yond the resurrection. But if the delivering 
up of the dead does not mean the resurrec- 
tion, no one has ever yet succeeded in telling 
what it does mean, and nothing is hazarded 
in the prediction that no one ever will. 

In the next chapter to this we find the 
"lake of fire" recognized in the immortal 
state, or in immediate connection with the 
new creation, when mortality and death are 
past. As this twentieth chapter closes up 
the history of this world, and notes the pass- 
ing away of the visible creation, with "the 
righteous saved, the wicked damned, and 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 235 

God's eternal government approved;" so the 
twenty -first chapter opens a new scene, where 
"the former things are done away" — a scene 
that lies beyond the limits of time: "And 
I saw a new heaven and a new earth ; for the 
first heaven and the first earth were passed 
away ; and there was no more sea. And I 
John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, com- 
ing down from God out of heaven, prepared 
as a bride adorned for her husband. And I 
heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, 
Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, 
and he will dwell with them, and they shall 
be his people, and God himself shall be with 
them, and be their God. And God shall 
wipe away all tears from their eyes; and 
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow 
nor crying, neither shall there be any more 
pain ; for the former things are passed away. 
And he that sat upon the throne said, Be- 
hold, I make all things new. And he said 
unto me, Write ; for these words are true and 
faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. 
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and 
the end. I will give unto him that is athirst 
of the fountain of the water of life freely. 



236 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

He that overcometh shall inherit all things ; 
and I will be his God, and he shall be my 
son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and 
the abominable, and murderers, and whore- 
mongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all 
liars, shall have their part in the lake which 
burnetii with fire and brimstone ; which is 
the second death." (Rev. xxi, 1-8.) 

This new heaven and new earth are the 
inheritance of the saints after the resurrection 
of the dead. It is not all of heaven, nor all 
the heaven the saints shall know and enjoy ; 
but it is their immortal home, where there is 
no death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain ; 
where God shall wipe away all tears, and 
dwell in the midst of his people. There is 
the city of the living God, the metropolis 
of the world of light, the home of all the 
saved. It can not be in time. It is not on 
earth beneath the curse of sin. It is not this 
world, but it is the world to come. And it 
is in connection with this new creation, in 
point of time, if the word time may be used 
in such connection, that the ungodly, the un- 
saved, "have their part in the lake that 
burneth with fire and brimstone ; which is the 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 237 

second death." As certainly as this blessed 
state where there is no more curse nor death, 
where God wipes away all tears from the eyes 
of his people, is in the future world, so cer- 
tainly is the state symbolized by the lake 
of fire in the future world. There is no 
" second death" till after the resurrection. 

Now we have found Gehenna. If it is not 
yet created, it is ordained of old in the pur- 
pose of God, and when death delivers up the 
bodies, and Hades delivers up the souls of the 
unsaved, then after death, and after the resur- 
rection, and after the judgment, "both soul 
and body" shall be "cast into Gehenna" — 
that real Gehenna of fire, the everlasting fire, 
prepared for the devil and his angels. The 
name means little to us; the thing is impor- 
tant, and had been just as real and as terrible 
if nameless. To the Jew the name was sig- 
nificant. It carried weight. To us the other 
symbol, the "lake of fire," is more im- 
pressive. The application is the same. The 
final destiny of the unsaved is the unsearch- 
able reality. 

The only escape for Universalism is to 
show that Gehenna, the "lake of fire," and 



238 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

the "second death/' all relate to something 
this side of the resurrection of the dead. 
This is a vast undertaking, with immortal 
issues depending upon it, and has often been 
attempted, but never accomplished. 

The first motion is to make the literal 
valley of Hinnom answer to all these forms 
of expression. But this is too preposterous 
to be depended on alone. It requires that 
we accept the assumption that the valley 
of Hinnom was the "fire prepared for the 
devil and his angels." And, further, it neces- 
sitates the belief that the "beast," and the 
"false prophet," and the devil were all cast 
into that valley, literally or figuratively, and 
that all the ungodly are condemned to the 
same fate. But who can believe this? It 
will also follow that the valley of Hinnom was 
the lake into which death and Hades were cast, 
after delivering up their dead. And who can 
believe that ? 

The next motion is to tell us that all 
these are figurative representations of the 
temporal judgments with which God visits 
the wicked, and especially of the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem. Well, then, what resem- 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 239 

blance is there between the valley of Hinnom 
and the destruction of Jerusalem? Why did 
Christ tell the Jews, who believed in personal 
devils, that their national judgments were 
4 'prepared for the devil and his angels?" 
What temporal calamity was symbolized by 
the casting of the devil into the lake of 
fire, to be tormented day and night forever 
and ever? In what way could this repre- 
sent the destruction of Jerusalem or any 
other temporal judgment? What temporal 
calamity is symbolized by the casting of 
death and Hades into the lake of fire? And 
if the casting of death and Hades into the 
lake of fire is a figurative setting forth of 
the abolishment of death and of the sep- 
arate state of souls, as it undoubtedly is, how 
can this transaction be supposed to have 
taken place at the destruction of Jerusalem ? 
Or how could it be used as a symbol of that 
calamitous event? Or why should the greater 
and more spiritual occurrence be taken as a 
figure of the smaller and more material one? 
Or, again, if this description of the destruc- 
tion of death and Hades, be taken as relating 
to the destruction of Jerusalem, or to any 



240 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

other temporal calamity, what becomes of 
the argument for the universal restoration 
of humanity, founded on the destruction of 
death and Hades, in the resurrection? And 
if there is to be a destruction of death and 
Hades by the resurrection of the dead — as 
there certainly must be, if the dead rise at 
all — why should this language be applied to 
any thing else? And if the "lake of fire," 
be it what it may, appears and continues after 
the delivering up of the dead — as it surely 
does — how can it be on this side of the res- 
urrection, or in any possible way relate to 
any thing on earth? If it is the receptacle 
of death and Hades, its place in the history of 
the universe is beyond the dominion of death, 
and beyond the period of the existence of 
souls in the disembodied state. 

It is a light thing with " liberalists" to 
dispose of all these stern Scriptures by pro- 
nouncing them "figurative," and giving rea- 
sons why they must be taken in a figurative 
sense. We go with them in this, much far- 
ther than they allow their people to know or 
believe ; for they wish it understood that 
"orthodox" people hold to the literal sense 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 241 

of this language, so that their superior light 
will the more readily impress their hearers; 
but, while we recognize symbols, metaphors, 
personifications, and other figures, wherever 
they exist, we seek to interpret and apply 
each passage according to its actual meaning, 
not omiting the figures. It is not satisfac- 
tory to show that a passage is figurative. 
We want to know what the figure means 
and what the passage means; and we want 
the figurative language to be so construed as 
to yield a sense in harmony with plainer 
passages, if possible, and never out of har- 
mony with the tenor of Scripture teaching 
or doctrine. 

But we are not through with the "liber- 
alist" interpretations yet. We are sometimes 
told that the "lake of fire," and these other 
symbols, represent neither the destruction of 
Jerusalem nor other temporal judgments of 
a national or personal kind, but simply the 
moral sufferings to which sinners are liable. 
Well, can any one tell us what propriety 
there is in calling the moral sufferings of sin- 
ners in this world "the fire prepared for the 
devil and his angels ?" Can any resemblance 

16 



242 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

be found between the casting of the devil 
into the "lake of fire" and the moral suffer- 
ings of sinners in this world? May we not 
also ask what kind of moral sufferings were 
signified by the casting of death and Hades 
into the lake of fire? And if Gehenna is an 
emblem of moral sufferings, will not some 
one show us the point of resemblance which 
is the basis of the figure? And may we not 
further ask why the casting of the sinner 
into this state of moral suffering takes place 
only after the body is killed? and then why 
the body, as well as the soul, is included? 
And if the lake of fire is a symbol of moral 
sufferings, why is it placed beyond the de- 
struction of death and Hades, and therefore 
beyond the resurrection of the dead, unless 
the moral sufferings are there also? But if the 
moral sufferings, symbolized by the "lake of 
fire," are indeed beyond the resurrection of 
the dead, and beyond the destruction of death 
and Hades, then is Gehenna there also; for 
Gehenna and "the lake of fire" point to the 
same sufferings. Let it be conceded that 
Gehenna and "the lake of fire" symbolize 
moral suffering beyond the destruction of 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 243 

death and Hades, and we ask no more. There 
is no resurrection beyond the resurrection. 
There is no destruction of death beyond the 
resurrection. There is no salvation from sin 
or death or suffering beyond the resurrection. 
If Gehenna is there, there also is ''the ever- 
lasting fire," "the fire that shall never be 
quenched. " Suppose the suffering is moral, 
Is it any the less real? Is it any the less 
terrible? Is it any the less final? Is not 
subjective wretchedness penal? 

Finally, on this point, we are told by "lib- 
eralists, " that the "lake of fire" denotes a 
process of purification, and that all the abom- 
inable characters of earth who have "their 
part" therein enjoy a great benefit! This 
lake is styled "a sovereign fire for purifica- 
tion," and the declaration that ungodly men 
shall have part therein, is construed into a 
most precious promise and pledge of what 
God shall do for all those who reject Christ! 
Then shall we any longer ridicule the Romish 
dogma of Purgatory? Does not this exceed 
the absurdity of that doctrine by far? Ro- 
manists find their Purgatory this side of the 
burning lake, while Hades yet exists before 



244 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

death is destroyed, and before the final judg- 
ment is past. But, with less reason, and less 
regard to Scriptural warrant, and without con- 
sistency of interpretation, "liberalists" find 
a purgatory in the perdition of ungodly men. 
We confess to astonishment at such temerity, 
and stand appalled before such wresting of 
the Scriptures. 

If the "lake of fire" denotes a process of 
purification, so does Gehenna, for this can not 
in reason be used differently, much less in an 
opposite sense. And the same is true of the 
"second death," for that consists in being 
cast into the lake. Then also must we ask, 
How comes it that this process of purifica- 
tion, set forth under emblems of the se- 
verest punishment, reached in consequence 
of rejecting the Gospel remedies for sin, is 
reserved until after the resurrection of the 
dead, and after the destruction of death and 
Hades f Although, in fact, there is no ground 
in Scripture on which to affirm a fiery ordeal 
of purification in Hades, it is far more reason- 
able to conjecture that such a process is pos- 
sible there than in Gehenna. If any form of 
probation continues after death, it is unques- 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 245 

tionably found in the unseen world, and on 
this side of the destruction of Hades ; so that 
the admission of another trial does not antag- 
onize the doctrine of the finality of the pun- 
ishment in Gehenna, of which the lake of fire is 
so impressive an emblem. If any are put on 
probation again, it must be those who have 
not had the Gospel in this life, — not those 
who have rejected it, — and if probation fails 
here, it may there. If the Gospel is rejected, 
and the divine Redeemer set at naught, the 
penal fires of the invisible world may also be 
defied, and all the reformatory agencies of 
Hades may prove inadequate to secure the 
regeneration of men, whose aggravated obsti- 
nacy, gathered in the idolatries and sensuali- 
ties of earth, has gone with them into the 
state of the dead. With such the transition 
from Hades to Gehenna will not indicate im- 
provement. Their moral affinities must be 
for evil, and their tendencies downward. By 
the operation of moral gravitation they sink 
forever. 

The assumption is that the "lake of fire" 
is a "process of purification." Then all that 
are cast into it are sent there for the purpose 



246 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

of purification. The "beast and the false 
prophet" are there. When will they be puri- 
fied? The devil is to be cast into it. Will he 
be purified? Why not? Death and Hades 
are to be cast into it. Is this for the purpose 
of purification? "But these are to be de- 
stroyed," I hear it said. Then, why cast 
them into "a sovereign fire for purification?" 
Consistency should be observed in the use 
of figures of speech and in the disposition 
of symbols. But if we admit the destruction 
of these, what then? The beast and false 
prophet were cast into the lake of fire and 
destroyed. The devil was cast into the lake 
of fire and destroyed. Death and Hades 
were cast into the lake of fire and destroyed — 
abolished forever. "Whosoever was not found 
written in the book of life was cast into the 
lake of fire," and — and purified! 

Perhaps some will deny the material point 
in this connection; that is, that Gehenna and 
the lake of fire mean the same thing. If 
they do, the difficulties are not canceled. 
The formidable facts of Scripture confront 
them still. The "lake of fire" is there, the 
emblem of the final state of the wicked, 



THE LAKE OF FIRE. 247 

beyond the resurrection and the judgment; 
and whatever meaning is attached to Gehenna, 
and however figurative the ''lake of fire, " the 
point so clearly made, that the punishment 
denoted is in the future world, stands un- 
moved. And this is the great fact.. Then, 
what if it could be shown that by the use of 
Gehenna the Savior made the valley of Hin- 
nom the emblem of national judgments? 
Would that explain the doom of the devil, 
and all the punishments that follow the de- 
struction of death and Hades f Would it 
obliterate the significance of the "second 
death?' , 

But no good reason can be given for sep- 
arating Gehenna and the lake of fire. As we 
have seen, Gehenna means punishment after 
death. Men are cast into it after the body is 
killed; and yet it receives them, soul and 
body, together. It is therefore after the res- 
urrection. It is the Gehenna-fire — "the ever- 
lasting fire," "the unquenchable fire," and it 
is the "fire prepared for the devil and his 
angels." It corresponds in every particular 
to the "lake of fire." Like the lake, it is 
after death, after the resurrection, and after 



248 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

the judgment; and it receives the devil and 
his angels, as well as the ungodly of earth. 
Then why separate them? This can not be 
done. Gehenna and the 'Make of fire" point 
to the same thing. That thing is final. It 
is the " second death." Upon it falls the 
curtain of everlasting night! No voice echoes 
back its horrors. No light gleams from its 
lurid burnings. No revolution of cycles num- 
bers the measure of its years. Eternity, 
dark, fathomless, hopeless, seals the fate of 
all adjudged to dwell amid the devouring fires. 



THE SECOND DEATH. 249 



Chapter XV. 

THE SECOND DEATH. 

IT is almost superfluous to add a chapter 
under the above caption, and yet there 
are two or three points that ought to be 
considered. 

The "second death," as was shown in the 
preceding chapter, relates to the "lake of 
fire," and expresses the last calamity of the 
wicked. The point in question concerning 
it has reference to the time when it shall 
occur, and the relation in which it stands to 
other events which mark the winding up of 
the Gospel economy, and the ushering in of 
the unchangeable realities of eternity. If 
we have read the Scriptures correctly, it is 
to occur beyond the mediatorial reign of 
Christ, beyond the end of time, beyond the 
period of the separate existence of the soul 
in Hades, beyond the resurrection of the 



2 SO NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

dead, and beyond the final judgment. All 
this has been made to appear, so that all 
that now remains is to consider what ob- 
jectors, — and especially Universalists, — have 
had to say in regard to it. 

Writers of the "liberalistic" class have 
usually skipped over this phraseology as 
lightly as possible. But few have positively 
expressed themselves in relation to it. Rev. 
J. M. Austin, in discussion with Dr. Holmes, 
says: "The second death is a figurative form 
of speech, used by the Revelator, unques- 
tionably, with reference to God's dealings with 
the Jews. It was a national death. The 
first death of that people was their Bab- 
ylonian captivity." This is significant. It 
shows timidity. It does not affirm any thing, 
but leaves us to infer that the "second death" 
means the national overthrow of the Jews by 
the Romans. This opinion, or rather sug- 
gestion, is shared by very many. It seems 
to answer a purpose. It puts a meaning on 
the phrase. But is it sound? Is it con- 
sistent? Does it explain the Scriptural use 
of the phrase? How is it supported? 

If the "second death" is a national event, 



THE SECOND DEATH. 251 

so also is the "lake of fire." But in the 
national captivity, which this man tells us 
was the "first death" of the Jews, the good 
and bad were alike involved ; and so it is 
very largely in all national calamities. Are 
we to believe that the good and bad share 
alike in the "second death?" Are they alike 
cast into the lake of fire? Did the beast and 
false prophet represent the Jewish nationality? 
Was the devil a partaker in the national 
downfall of the Jews ? These are all cast 
into the lake of fire, and this is the "second 
death." But if the second death is a na- 
tional death of the Jews, accomplished when 
Jerusalem was destroyed, why is it, in the 
symbolical representation, put off till after 
the termination of the existence in Hades f 
Why is it placed beyond the destruction of 
death ? Why do we find it only beyond the 
resurrection and the judgment ? This order of 
events is not accidental. It is too uniform and 
too clearly put in the account to be treated as 
destitute of meaning. To it we appeal with 
confidence. It forever sets aside all arbitrary 
applications of the "second death" to any 
national event in the history of the past. 



252 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Others of the same school teach differ- 
ently. Rev. I. D. Williamson, D. D., widely 
known as author and editor in the Univer- 
salist ranks, and of excellent reputation, thus 
presents the subject: "There were some in 
the days of Jude who suffered this death. 
Speaking of those unbelieving Jews who 
turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, 
and denied the Lord that bought them, he 
says, ' These are spots in your feasts of 
charity ; clouds without water, driven about 
with winds; trees whose fruit withereth, twice 
dead, plucked up by the roots.' Twice dead, 
did the apostle say ? Aye, verily. Then 
they had suffered the 'second death.' The 
Gospel found them dead in sin. By its 
quickening energies it raised them to spir- 
itual life. But now they rejected the Gospel, 
denied the Lord that bought them, and were 
hurt of the second death. Such are my 
views of the second death, and of their cor- 
rectness I entertain no manner of doubt." 
(Lectures, page 161.) 

The point here is readily seen, and its 
want of force is easily shown. It makes the 
second death consist in backsliding or apos- 



THE SECOND DEATH. 253 

tasy ; and the only foundation it has is in 
the metaphorical tree which is spoken of as 
"twice dead." But there is no proof that 
the persons represented by the fruitless trees 
were ever converted or raised by the quick- 
ening energies of the Gospel to spiritual life. 
The indications in the passage and in the 
connection are all against the supposition. 
These persons are described in the fourth 
verse, part of which the doctor applies to 
them, and so well identified that we dare not 
admit that they ever were truly converted. 
They appear to have gotten into the Church, 
or in some way to have sought . association 
with the disciples, but not by right as sincere 
inquirers or genuine converts. "For there 
are certain men crept in unawares, who were 
before of old ordained to this condemnation, 
ungodly men, turning the grace of our God 
into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord 
God, and our Lord Jesus Christ/' They 
were not converts, but " ungodly men;" they 
"crept in unawares." There is not a solitary 
hint in all the book that they" were converted. 
Then, of course, they were not backsliders. 
Every thing in the account marks them as 



254 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

impostors. So bad were they that the apostle 
seems to have labored to find metaphors strong 
enough to picture their utter worthlessness ; 
and in quoting the passage our author omits 
some of the terrible arraignment. Let us 
read it entire : "These are spots in your feasts 
of charity, when they feast with you, feeding 
themselves without fear ; clouds they are with- 
out water, carried about of winds; trees whose 
fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, 
plucked up by the roots ; raging waves of the 
sea, foaming out their own shame ; wandering- 
stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of 
darkness forever." They are ''spots;" they 
are "clouds;" they are "trees;" they are 
"raging waves of the sea;" they are "wan- 
dering stars." As "clouds" they are "with- 
out water;" and as "trees" they are "with- 
out fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the 
roots." The "twice dead" is simply an 
emphatic representation of their utter desti- 
tution of life, and this is intensified further 
by the next expression, "plucked up by 
the roots." Thus the apostle shows their 
absolute hopelessness, so far as fruit-bearing 
is concerned. If any thing in the passage is 



THE SECOND DEATH. 255 

plain, it is that these "ungodly men/' who 
"crept in unawares," were never in the 
Church by right, but were deceivers from the 
beginning. They are fully described, and 
not less graphically or forcibly, in the second 
chapter of the second epistle of Peter. 

But even if the apostle was speaking of 
backsliders, the phrase "twice dead," de- 
scriptive of the fruitless trees, as it is, is an 
insufficient warrant for this interpretation of 
the second death. There is no hint in all the 
Bible that the "second death" is restricted to 
backsliders. On the contrary, it is affirmed 
of all who "were not found written in the 
book of life;" in Revelation xxi, 8, we have 
at least a partial catalogue of the characters 
destined to the dreadful experience. This 
includes many who were never converted. 
The hypothesis is contradicted by every pas- 
sage that mentions the subject. And besides 
all this, the period of the "second death," as 
determined by the order of events, is beyond 
the limits of this life; for it is never recog- 
nized in the New Testament except as follow- 
ing the resurrection of the dead. It consists 
in beincr cast into the lake of fire. That 



256 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

lake, symbol though it be, does not appear 
till after the separate existence in Hades, 
and after the reign of death over the bodies 
of men. It is the last calamity. Nothing is 
revealed beyond it. 

Its nature and results are not in our pres- 
ent inquiry. Evidently it cuts off all hope 
of eternal life. Some think it destroys the 
body, and separates the soul from it, leaving 
the latter to its wandering loneliness in the 
darkness of space, beyond the boundaries 
of the organic universe — "the blackness of 
darkness forever" being its sole inheritance. 
This, however, is speculation. Our present 
business is with facts. The second death is 
a fact of stupendous import. Its incidents 
are unknown, and may we never come into 
the awful secret of its power and effect ! One 
thing we know, and that is, it is not the way 
to heaven. There is no intimation in all the 
Scriptures that any human soul ever did or 
ever can pass its portals and enter the gates 
of the city of God. The song of triumph 
before the throne recalls the redemption from 
earth, and sin, and death, but not from the 
"second death." 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 257 



Chapter XVI. 

RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

THIS is Scriptural language, and it means 
something. It will, therefore, be profit- 
able for us to study it, and, if possible, find 
out its real import. The passage is as fol- 
lows: "Marvel not at this; for the hour is 
coming in which all that are in the graves 
shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; 
they that have done good unto the resurrec- 
tion of life, and they that have done evil, 
unto the resurrection of damnation." 

Almost every one who has a doctrine to 
maintain, whether orthodox or heterodox, 
finds it necessary to explain these words, either 
to apply them to the support of his position, 
or to get them out of his way ; and, unfortu- 
nately, the most that has been written on the 
passage, has had the latter object in view. 
Universalists have had great trouble with this 
17 



258 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Scripture, and their abuse of it is wonderful. 
Swedenborgians, Quakers, Second Adventists, 
and all the hosts of Destructionists and Liber- 
alists, who deny the resurrection of the bodies 
of the wicked, find it a lion in their path, look- 
ing them steadily in the face, and defying their 
skill. Professor Bush, who has distinguished 
himself perhaps more than any other man in 
a century, in opposing the doctrine of the 
resurrection of the body, found great diffi- 
culty in attempting to harmonize these words 
with his predetermined conclusions. He says : 
"The passage, as understood in its literal 
import, does certainly encounter the force of 
that cumulative mass of evidence, built upon 
rational and philosophical grounds, which we 
have arrayed against any statement of the 
doctrine that would imply the participation 
of the body in the rising again which is 
predicated of the dead. We do not, by any 
means, affirm that the conclusions from that 
source to which we have come are sufficient 
of themselves to countervail the rebutting 
conclusions which may be formed from the 
present text. All we would say is, that they 
have weight, and, consequently, we are not 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 259 

required, or rather are not at liberty, at once 
to dismiss them." Strange that he did not 
see that a plain "thus saith the Lord" should 
sweep away all "conclusions" the moment 
it encountered them, which were based on 
merely "rational and philosophical grounds;" 
but when men set out to oppose their rational 
deductions to God's miracles, there is no limit 
to their fallacies or to their infatuations. 

We shall not examine all that has been 
said by various parties in order to break the 
force of this Scripture in support of the literal 
resurrection of the dead ; for, while they 
approach it with different ends to serve, or it 
may be with conflicting conclusions to sup- 
port, they agree in trying to explain it with- 
out taking it in its most obvious sense, as 
proclaiming a general rising again of the good 
and bad. Therefore a consideration of the 
common methods of interpretation will suffice, 
without specific reference to the doctrines of 
the different opposers of the literal sense. 

All who object to the literal sense for 
some reason deny the literal resurrection, and 
mostly because this "coming forth unto a 
resurrection of damnation" carries alonq; with 



260 NEW TESTAMENT TDEA OF HELL. 

it the idea of eternal punishment, or of the 
irrevocable condemnation of the wicked, in 
the eternal world. Denying this doctrine, 
they are compelled to fix upon the passage 
some kind of interpretation which . assumes 
that the language is figurative ; and we find 
them not at all particular about the figure, 
so it is " figurative, " and does not mean what 
it says. Their most common method is to 
appeal to the Old Testament writers, partic- 
ularly Daniel and Ezekiel, to explain these 
words of the New Testament. They would 
have these old prophets explain Christ ! 

We protest against this, as a reversal of - 
the order of things. It violates one of the 
most important rules of exegesis, in making 
the older and more obscure writers limit and 
explain the meaning of the later and plainer 
ones. This is manifestly improper. Not, in- 
deed, that the Old Testament can not shed 
light upon the New, where there is a connec- 
tion between them, or an allusion in the New 
to the Old; in many instances it does: but 
the language of the Old is not to be made 
the standard by which the language of the 
New is to be tried. The later and plainer 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 261 

sayings of Christ, and of the New Testament 
writers, should be taken as the commentary, 
and not the reverse of this, if there be in 
them any allusion to the prophecies of the 
Old Testament. Our Savior should be al- 
lowed to explain Daniel and Ezekiel, even to 
the extent, if need be, of giving their words 
an application beyond any thing they knew 
or intended ; for he came after them, and un- 
derstood them, and had the right to enlarge 
their meaning, which he often did, not by 
contradicting their utterances, but by expand- 
ing them and lifting them to a higher plane of 
thought, where spiritual and eternal truths 
come into view, in addition to the tempo- 
ralities which filled the vision of the proph- 
ets. We dare not therefore restrict the words 
of Christ to the precise scope and meaning of 
similar language in the Old Testament. 

If the words of Christ before us, allude at 
all to the passage in Daniel, they are an au- 
thoritative exposition and application of that 
passage; and if they allude to the vision of 
"dry bones" in. Ezekiel, they must be taken 
as an explanation of the ultimate meaning of 
that prophecy. With this remark, the cor- 



262 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

rectness and fairness of which is beyond ques- 
tion, we may look at these Old Testament 
Scriptures and see how impossible it is, even 
with their assistance, to escape the doctrine 
of a general resurrection followed by eternal 
retributions. 

"And at that time shall Michael stand up, 
the great prince which standeth for the child- 
ren of thy people; and there shall be a time of 
trouble, such as never was since there was a 
nation, even to that same time: and at that 
time thy people shall be delivered, every one 
that shall be found written in the book. 
And many of them that sleep in the dust 
of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting 
life, and some to shame and everlasting con- 
tempt." (Dan. xii, 1,2.) The phrase, "many 
of them that sleep," is equivalent to "the 
many," or "as many of them that sleep ;" 
so that the language does not forbid the idea 
of a general rising, but rather implies it. 
There is no doubt that it relates to a resur- 
rection of some kind, and to some extent, 
and one in which there are two classes sharing, 
and two opposite results following. What 
does it mean? 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 263 

The objectors to the literal resurrection 
assume, of course, that it means a " figura- 
tive" resurrection, or that the language is 
"figurative," and means something which is a 
resurrection only in a figurative sense. Well, 
what does it all mean? Some tell us that it 
means a political resurrection, and others in- 
sist that it relates to a moral or spiritual res- 
urrection. We shall test both interpretations. 

But finding what we wish to say on this 
point well said by Dr. Kingsley — subse- 
quently bishop — we quote his words: "But 
is the passage which we have quoted from 
Daniel figurative? If so, what does the sleep 
or death in the dust mean? Whatever it 
means, to awake and come out of the dust 
must mean the very reverse. Well, then, 
suppose it means politieal death — political 
degradation and adversity. Then to come 
forth from this death would be to enjoy a life 
of political prosperity. But some ' awake 
to shame and everlasting contempt/ What 
kind of political prosperity is this? Political 
shame and contempt are just what the political 
death signifies. Are the death and the resur- 
rection from death the same thing? Then it 



264 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

can not mean a political death. Let us see 
whether spiritual death will do any better. 
If the death is a death in trespasses and sins, 
then awaking from this death is coming forth 
to a life of purity and holiness. But some 
that were dead 'awake to shame and ever- 
lasting contempt. ' What kind of purity and 
holiness is this? How hard it is to make 
God's Word teach false doctrines!" 

All this and more comes from the attempt 
to explain the words of Christ, which are so 
plain and pointed, by the less plain and more 
highly figurative language of the old prophet. 
Now, let us reverse this order, and permit 
the Savior, the later speaker, to explain the 
words of the former speaker. It then appears 
that the "many that sleep in the dust of the 
earth," means "all that are in the graves;" 
that they "awake" by hearing the "voice 
of the Son of God;" that to "awake to ever- 
lasting life" means to "come forth unto the 
resurrection of life," and that to "awake to 
shame and everlasting contempt" is to "come 
forth unto the resurrection of damnation." 
This is plain, consistent, natural, and if left 
untortured, its meaning is easily understood. 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 265 

But .our "liberalistic" friends not only 
labor to limit this passage by the language 
quoted from Daniel, explaining the plain by 
the obscure, but they seek with much ex- 
ertion to interpret it by Ezekiel's vision of 
"dry bones" — claiming, of course, that it 
means neither more nor less than that vision 
signifies. This is all gratuitous. There is no 
allusion in the passage in John to that vision 
in Ezekiel ; but if such allusion could be 
found, the words of Christ would have to be 
taken as an authoritative exposition of that 
vision, giving to it an ultimate meaning quite 
beyond its primary design, and possibly 
reaching beyond the prophet's highest con- 
ception of its import. 

Ezekiel's language is necessarily figurative. 
It carries evidence of this upon its face, as it 
can not possibly be explained except as figu- 
rative language. But this is not the case 
with the language of Christ, as there is noth- 
ing in it inconsistent with a literal interpre- 
tation. Ezekiel spoke of the "whole house 
of Israel;" but Christ spoke of "all that 
are in the graves." Ezekiel spoke of the 
rising of only one class, while Christ spoke 



266 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

definitely of the resurrection of two classes, 
the good and the bad. Ezekiel prophesied 
long before the birth of Christ, and neither 
he nor the other prophets brought "life and 
immortality to light" so clearly as did the 
Messiah himself. The latter came after the 
prophets, and was in every respect greater 
than the prophets, and made many things 
plain which the prophets left obscure. He 
fulfilled many of their predictions, and poured 
light upon what they only darkly shadowed 
forth ; confirming their words, indeed, but 
giving them an application and meaning truly 
his own. Then, how absurd the attempt to 
make his words subordinate to theirs — or, 
which is the same thing, to restrict the im- 
port of his language by the necessary limita- 
tions of theirs! 

The words of Christ, in this passage in 
John, mean more than did Ezekiel's vision of 
"dry bones," or they do not. If they do 
not, they relate to the moral reformation of 
Israel before Christ was born, and to the con- 
sequent restoration of the nation from the 
"Babylonian captivity," which was accom- 
plished hundreds of years before the words 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 267 

were spoken by him, although he clearly in- 
timated that he was looking to the future, 
saying, "the hour is coming. " But if his 
words do mean more than that vision meant, 
then it is manifest folly to try to explain 
them by that vision, or to restrict them to its 
signification. Ezekiel's vision represented the 
house of Israel in their backslidden condition, 
as in a state of spiritual death and their 
captivity as .a political death. They had 
apostatized, and they had been carried away 
to Babylon; and now they were repenting, 
and God was about to deliver them from 
bondage, and restore them to their land and 
their nationality. The prophet, in this vision, 
described their repentance and return, under 
the figure of a resurrection from the dead. 
It was a deliverance from the moral and po- 
litical death they had suffered. The moral 
resurrection is indicated in these words: "And 
I shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall 
live." The political resurrection is expressed 
thus: "I will open -your graves, and cause 
you to come up out of your graves into the 
land of Israel, and I shall place you in your 
own land." But in all this there is not a 



268 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

word about the "resurrection of damnation. " 
This much, at least, the Savior added, and 
this is the point of difficulty with all who 
seek a figurative interpretation for his words. 
They could make the word "damnation" 
represent a state of apostasy, or any adverse 
or degraded condition, politically or morally 
considered; but how to manage the word 
"resurrection," in this connection, is what 
they are unable to find. 

Then, having seen the absurdity of limit- 
ing this passage in John to the exact import 
of similar language in the Old Testament, we 
come to a direct examination of the efforts 
which have been made to give it other than 
its plain, literal meaning. 

It is sometimes claimed that it should be 
understood of a spiritual resurrection, because 
a spiritual resurrection is taught in this chap- 
ter, and was largely the subject of discourse 
on this particular occasion. But this fact, 
when examined, furnishes a substantial reason 
why the claim should not be admitted. The 
Savior was not guilty of "vain repetitions," 
and did not indulge in useless tautology. 
Hence, having taught the doctrine of a spir- 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 269 

itual death and resurrection, as plainly ap- 
pears in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth 
verses of this chapter, he certainly did not 
proceed, in these next verses, to de'clare the 
same thing over again in language less easily 
understood. We could not believe him guilty 
of such a departure from the propriety of 
speech, even if we had no warning against it. 
But we have warning against it. The phrase, 
"marvel not at this," forbids the idea that 
he was just going to repeat the same thing in 
different language, and requires us to suppose 
he had finished the point in hand, and was 
about to tell them something different and 
still more wonderful. He had just said to 
them, "The time is now come when the 
spiritually dead shall hear the voice of the 
Son of God, and they that truly hear shall 
be made alive to God by faith," and this 
marvelous announcement no doubt caused 
signs of astonishment to appear in his audi- 
ence, which he recognized, and to which he 
alluded, when he proceeded not to tell the 
same thing, but to make the still more as- 
tounding; revelation. He continued, "Marvel 
not at this," it is a great mystery, but not 



270 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

so startling as that which is yet to come- — 
4 'Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming 
in the which all that are in the graves shall 
hear his voice, and shall come forth." This 
is truly marvelous ! Nothing but infinite 
power and wisdom can accomplish it; neverthe- 
less it is positively affirmed, and it is carefully 
distinguished from the spiritual resurrection. 
In the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses, 
the language relates to a present privilege, as 
is seen in a note of time which should not be 
overlooked. " Verily, verily I say unto you, 
the hour is coming, and now is." There can 
be no mistake here. But in the passage 
which describes the more marvelous event, 
there is no such indication of time. It is 
simply, "The hour is coming. " The omis- 
sion of the phrase "and now is," is signifi- 
cant. It places the "coming forth" from 
the "graves" in the future, and not in the 
present. 

Those who are spiritually dead, or "dead 
in trespasses and in sins," are not in condi- 
tion to do good, nor does the Bible ascribe 
good works to them while in that state. 
They first "pass from death unto life." 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 271 

They must hear the voice of the Son of God, 
as he speaks to them through the Gospel, 
receive his quickening grace, and then begin 
a course of good works as the fruit of faith. 
But some of those mentioned in the twenty- 
eighth verse had "done crood ," not while in 
the grave, of course, but before going into 
it, and before hearing the voice of the Son 
of God calling them to come forth. Their 
having "done good" is that which now 
distinguishes them, and secures the divine 
approval; not that it secures the "coming 
forth," but it determines the character and 
results of the resurrection, giving them part 
in the "resurrection of life." They that 
have "done evil" shall also hear the voice 
and come forth, but unto a very different 
resurrection. Then, if we suppose this whole 
passage speaks of a spiritual death and resur- 
rection, what are we to understand by this 
"coming forth unto a resurrection of dam- 
nation?" We are told that the last word 
means "condemnation." Very well; but 
were not those who had "done evil" con- 
demned before this coming forth? We read 
that unbelievers are "condemned already." 



272 NEW TESTAMENT TDEA OF HELL. 

But this is not the word whose meaning we 
are seeking after, for no stress is laid on any 
difference, supposed or real, between damna- 
tion and condemnation. The question is, 
What idea shall we attach to the word " resur- 
rection " in this remarkable sentence? There 
is evidently a resurrection in contemplation 
for those already condemned, for they ''shall 
come forth;" now, what does this mean? If 
they are spiritually dead, and in the graves 
of sin, no coming forth is needed to bring 
them into condemnation ; nor can we conceive 
of any coming forth from the graves of sin 
without a deliverance from sin, and there- 
fore from condemnation. This would be to 
emerge into a life, of holiness; but no such 
coming forth into life is predicated of them. 
At this point " liberalists" resort to quib- 
bling. They tell us that all of us do some 
good and some evil during life, so that if this 
passage be taken literally, we must all have 
part in both resurrections. This is a play 
upon words. To all sensible people it is clear 
enough that there are two classes here, dis- 
tinguished by their predominant character- 
istics, as the good and bad ; and that these 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 273 

include all the race, indicating their relation 
to Christ, without marking the quality or 
measure of their moral deserts, further than to 
denote the fact of their classification. Hence, 
4 'they that have done good" will not include 
such as once did a good thing or a number 
of good things and then rejected Christ, and 
died impenitent. In that event the Scrip- 
tures inform us that their former righteous- 
ness shall not be remembered unto them. 
And "they that have done evil" will not 
include those who for a time lived in sin, and 
afterwards repented and obtained pardon ; 
for their sins are " blotted out," and shall be 
remembered no more forever. Those who 
put this forward as a difficulty overlook the 
fact that if there be any trouble in it in 
the interpretation of the passage of a literal 
resurrection, the same trouble exists in the 
way of the spiritual resurrection. 

Another point of about the same character, 
and usually mentioned in the same connec- 
tion, is the assertion that these words can not 
refer to all the dead, and teach a general 
resurrection, for the reason that some are not 
"in the graves," having never been buried. 
18 



274 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. 

Some are lost in the sea, some are burned 
to ashes, and some are left to putrefaction 
above ground; but then the word "graves" 
denotes the resting-place of human dust, 
wherever it may lie in the broad empire of 
death. The sea, death, and Hades shall de- 
liver up the dead which are in them. Then, 
again, we are told that this Scripture does 
not relate to a resurrection from either bodily 
or spiritual death, but to an elevation of the 
Church from poverty and reproach to a high 
position of honor and influence in the world. 
Learned disquisitions are given to prove that 
the word resurrection means promotion, or a 
going up to a higher state. With Universal- 
ists this is a favorite thought, especially when 
they encounter the passage which speaks of 
men being "recompensed in the resurrection 
of the just." At all hazards they must es- 
cape the idea of any "recompense" in the 
resurrection state, for either good or bad. 
But if the elevation of the Church in this 
world to a state of prosperity and happiness 
constitutes the "coming forth unto the res- 
urrection of life," the question recurs with 
undiminished force, What does the "coming 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 275 

forth unto the resurrection of damnation " 
mean? What sort of "promotion" or eleva- 
tion is this? In answer we hear it said, that 
in times of the Church's triumph the wicked 
hear the Gospel, reject it, and sink into 
deeper guilt and degradation. And so they 
do ; but if the word resurrection means pro- 
motion or elevation, not to say rising from 
the dominion of death, we fail to see why it 
should be employed to express this experi- 
ence of sinking deeper and deeper into moral 
darkness and misery. This is a strange pro- 
motion indeed ! 

But, finally, losing confidence in all other 
efforts to explain away this terrible "resur- 
rection of damnation," Liberalists adopt the 
short method of disposing of it by applying 
the whole passage to national affairs. With 
them the destruction of Jerusalem solves all 
mysteries. The "resurrection of life" is 
made to mean the calling of the Gentiles to 
inherit Gospel privileges and blessings, while 
the "resurrection of damnation" is referred 
to the overthrow of the Jews, when their city 
and temple were destroyed by the Roman 
army. But, unfortunately for this notion, the 



276 NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF HELL. . 

Gentiles had not "done good" prior to their 
call, nor was their call based on their former 
good conduct at all. This application, there- 
fore, is both unwarranted and preposterous. 
So, in the downfall of the Jews, we can see 
"condemnation" easily enough, but we find 
nothing like a "coming forth" from the 
graves — nothing to designate as a ''resurrec- 
tion," even in the sense of "promotion." 
In a word, every effort to explain this pass- 
age of Scripture without accepting the literal 
meaning — that is, without applying it to the 
general resurrection of the dead, to be fol- 
lowed by eternal retributions, is a manifest 
failure. The clear, steady current of truth 
sweeps away all these devices of error, like 
drift upon the flowing stream, leaving no re- 
sort for the believer in the Scriptures, but to 
acknowledge the fact that the "hour is com- 
ing, in the which all that are in the graves 
shall hear his voice, and shall come forth ; 
they that have done good unto the resurrec- 
tion of life ; and they that have done evil 
unto the resurrection of damnation." This is 
"the second death," the " damnation of Ge- 
henna." 



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